Memorable Quotations: Oliver Goldsmith

Oliver Goldsmith (1730?-1774) was an Anglo-Irish author. A member of Samuel Johnson's inner circle, he found fame with Citizen of the World (1762), a series of capricious essays; the philosophical poem The Traveler (1764); and the nostalgic bucolic The Deserted Village (1770). His repute, though, rests on two comedies, The Good-Natur'd Man (1768) and She Stoops to Conquer (1773), and on his novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766). The comedies infused realism into the lackluster, maudlin theater of the time and, similar to the novel, are instilled with wit and earnest humanity.