"You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips"
About this Quote
Goldsmith’s line lands with the kind of calm sting that makes moralizers nervous: the real argument isn’t what you say, it’s what you do while you’re saying it. In an era thick with pulpit authority and polished rhetoric, he’s basically demoting eloquence. Words can perform virtue; lives have to pay for it.
The intent is corrective, but not pious. Goldsmith, a poet with a satirist’s eye for hypocrisy, is calling out the social economy of “goodness” in the 18th century: reputations built on manners, public declarations of principle, and the easy theater of condemnation. A sermon with the lips is cheap because it’s weightless; it can be delivered by someone who’s privately cruel, vain, or indifferent. A sermon with the life costs something. It requires consistency, restraint, and the willingness to be judged over time rather than applauded in the moment.
The subtext is also a quiet power move. By shifting the standard from speech to conduct, Goldsmith takes moral authority away from institutions and professional scolders and hands it to ordinary behavior. Integrity becomes legible in small, repeatable acts: how you treat servants, neighbors, debtors, strangers. That’s a more democratic ethics, but also a harsher one, because it eliminates alibis. You don’t get credit for correct language if your life is a contradiction.
It works because it’s compact and embodied: “lips” versus “life,” performance versus proof. The line is short enough to remember, sharp enough to accuse.
The intent is corrective, but not pious. Goldsmith, a poet with a satirist’s eye for hypocrisy, is calling out the social economy of “goodness” in the 18th century: reputations built on manners, public declarations of principle, and the easy theater of condemnation. A sermon with the lips is cheap because it’s weightless; it can be delivered by someone who’s privately cruel, vain, or indifferent. A sermon with the life costs something. It requires consistency, restraint, and the willingness to be judged over time rather than applauded in the moment.
The subtext is also a quiet power move. By shifting the standard from speech to conduct, Goldsmith takes moral authority away from institutions and professional scolders and hands it to ordinary behavior. Integrity becomes legible in small, repeatable acts: how you treat servants, neighbors, debtors, strangers. That’s a more democratic ethics, but also a harsher one, because it eliminates alibis. You don’t get credit for correct language if your life is a contradiction.
It works because it’s compact and embodied: “lips” versus “life,” performance versus proof. The line is short enough to remember, sharp enough to accuse.
Quote Details
| Topic | Honesty & Integrity |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
More Quotes by Oliver
Add to List
