Oliver Goldsmith Quotes

The discontented believe that their regrets are about the past.

Many women long for what eludes them, and like not what is offered them.

I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing

The things that I can't have I want, And what I have seems second-rate, The things I want to do I can't, And what I have to do I hate.

My dad had a lot of bad luck. You could see his suffering, his terrible suffering, living a life that was disappointing and looking for another one.

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.

We are never happy; we can only remember that we were so once.

After you get what you want you don't want it.

I feel like I was born in the wrong time.

There are times when you wish you were somewhere else, and someone else.

Haircuts are never good. You always end up being unhappy.

I hate not playing. That's the bottom line.

I was at my most miserable when I had everything I ever wanted.

The malcontent is neither well, full nor fasting; and though he abounds with complaints, yet nothing dislikes him but the present; for what he condemns while it was, once passed, he magnifies and strives to recall it out of the jaw of time. What he hath he seeth not, his eyes are so taken up with what he wants; and what he sees he careth not for, because be cares so much for that which is not.

A way of life that keeps saying 'Around the next corner, above the next step,' works against the natural order of things and makes it so difficult to be happy and good.

Wanting more is just a recipe for heartache.

He had the look of one who had drunk the cup of life and found a dead beetle at the bottom.

I was always a 'grass is greener' kind of guy.

Any object of desire is bound to bring frustration. Any expectation is bound to turn into frustration. Expectation is the beginning of frustration, the very seed. Beware of it!

You know, it's not the world I would have wanted, for sure.

Being frustrated is disagreeable, but the real disasters of life begin when you get what you want.

The want of a thing is perplexing enough, but the possession of it, is intolerable.

Structural dissatisfaction: Returning to circumstances that once pleased you, after having experienced a more thrilling or opulent way of life, and finding that you can no longer tolerate them.

Her future, she thought, was likely to be worse than her past, for after her years of contented renunciation, she had slipped back into desire and longing; she found joyless days of distasteful occupation harder and harder; she found the image of the intense and varied life she yearned for, and despaired of, becoming more and more importunate.

The ox longs for the gaudy trappings of the horse; the lazy pack-horse would fain plough. [We envy the position of others, dissatisfied with our own.]