Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.

The family moved to the parsonage at Lissoy between Athlone and Ballymahon and continued to live there until his father's death in 1747. The location of his birthplace is also uncertain. Thomas De Quincey wrote of him 'All the motion of Goldsmith's nature moved in the direction of the true the natural the sweet the gentle'.

He is thought to have written the classic children's tale The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes the source of the phrase "goody two-shoes". He also wrote An History of the Earth and Animated Nature.