Oliver Goldsmith

1728–1774 · Anglo-Irish poet, playwright & novelist

Oliver Goldsmith was an Anglo-Irish writer of the London literary circle around Samuel Johnson, celebrated for the novel The Vicar of Wakefield, the comedy She Stoops to Conquer and the poem The Deserted Village. In 1760–61 he published a series of satirical letters in The Public Ledger, written in the voice of an imaginary Chinese visitor to London; collected in 1762 as The Citizen of the World, they are the true home of this ‘Confucius’ maxim. He died in London in 1774.

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“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall”

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