W. S. Gilbert famous quotes

So I fell in love with a rich attorney's Elderly ugly daughter.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Daughter #Elderly #Ugly

When everyone is somebody then no one's anybody.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Men

I'm really very sorry for you all, but it's an unjust world, and virtue is triumphant only in theatrical performances.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Sorry #World #Unjust

Deerstalking would be a very fine sport if only the deer had guns.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Sports #Gun #Hunting

Things are seldom what they seem.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Appearance

No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have; and I think he's a dirty little beast.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Dirty #Thinking #Littles

Oh, I am a cook and a captain bold, And the mate of the Nancybrig, And a bos'sun tight, and a midshipmite, And the crew of the captain's gig!
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Captains #Sun #Gigs

I shall carry to the Catacombs of Age, Photographically lined On the tablet of my mind
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Memories #Mind #Age

poverty is obsolete and hunger is abolished
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Poverty #Hunger #Obsolete

When Wellington thrashed Bonaparte, As every child can tell, The House of Peers, throughout the war, Did nothing in particular, And did it very well
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Children #War #Government

If you give me your attention, I will tell you what I am: I'm a genuine philanthropist--all other kinds are sham. Each little fault of temper and each social defect In my erring fellow creatures, I endeavor to correct.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Giving #Erring #Littles

I've an irritating chuckle, I've a celebrated sneer, I've an entertaining snigger, I've a fascinating leer; To everybody's prejudice I know a thing or two; I can tell a woman's age in half a minute--and I do
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Two #Age #Half

I know everybody's income and what everybody earns, And I carefully compare it with the income-tax returns
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Return #Income #Manners

What though I cannot meet my bills? What though I suffer toothache's ills? What though I swallow countless pills?
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Suffering #Bills #Pills

A man is but an ***** Who fights in a cuirass
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Fighting #Men #Ass

Oh! a private buffoon is a light-hearted loon, If you listen to popular rumour; From morning to night he's so joyous and bright, And he bubbles with wit and good humour!
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Funny #Morning #Night

Bless your heart, they don't mind--they're exceedingly kind-- They don't blame you--as long as you're funny!
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Funny #Heart #Long

Strike the concertina's melancholy string! Blow the spirit-stirring harp like any thing! Let the piano's martial blast Rouse the Echoes of the Past
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Blow #Past #Piano

Society has quite forsaken all her wicked courses, Which empties our police courts, and abolishes divorces.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Divorce #Police #Society

If the jests that you crack have an orthodox smack, You may get a bland smile from these sages; But should it, by chance, be imported from France, Half-a-crown is stopped out of your wages!
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Cracks #Wages #Crowns

If your master is surly, from getting up early (And tempers are short in the morning), An inopportune joke is enough to provoke Him to give you, at once, a month's warning.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Morning #Giving #Warning

Bind up their wounds - but look the other way.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Way #Looks #Wounds

Who knows but we may count among our intellectual chickens Like them an Earl of Thackeray and p'raps a Duke of Dickens
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Rap #Intellectual #May

For duty, duty must be done; The rule applies to everyone.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Done #Duty

Life is a joke that's just begun.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Life Is #Jokes

All bayonets are bad.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Bayonets

I accept refreshment at any hands, however lowly.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Hands #Accepting

I am a courtier grave and serious Who is about to kiss your hand: Try to combine a pose imperious With a demeanour nobly bland.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Kissing #Hands #Trying

On my face extended flat I was walloped with a cat For listening at the key-hole of the door.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Cat #Doors #Keys

Bow, bow, ye lower middle classes! Bow, bow, ye tradesmen, bow, ye masses!
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Class #Bows #Mass

No good play is a success; fine writing and high morals are useless on the stage. I have been scribbling twaddle for thirty-five years to suit the public taste, and I should know.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Writing #Years #Play

If I can wheedle A knife or a needle, Why not a Silver Churn?
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Knives #Imagination #Why Not

Utopia's quite another land; In her enterprising movements, She is England--with improvements
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Land #Movement #Improvement

Then a sentimental passion of a vegetable fashion must excite your languid spleen, An attachment a la Plato for a bashful young potato, or a not-too-French French bean!
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Fashion #Plato #Passion

Let the punishment fit the crime.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Punishment #Fit #Crime

Roll on, thou ball, roll on! Through pathless realms of Space
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Space #Earth #Balls

And that singular anomaly, the lady novelist-- I don't think she'd be missed--I'm sure she'd not be missed!
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Thinking #Novelists #Anomalies

every Jack He must study the knack If he wants to make sure of his Jill!
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Want #Knack #Study

It's true I've got no shirts to wear; It's true my butcher's bill is due; It's true my prospects all look blue-- But don't let that unsettle you
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Blue #Bills #Looks

In the discovery of secret things and in the investigation of hidden causes, stronger reasons are obtained from sure experiments and demonstrated arguments than from probable conjectures and the opinions of philosophical speculators of the common sort.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Philosophical #Discovery #Secret

I always voted at my party's call, and I never thought of thinking for myself at all.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Party #Thinking #Politics

Darwinian man, though well-behaved, at best is only a monkey shaved.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Men #Monkeys #Evolution

Wherever valor true is found, true modesty will there abound.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Humility #Pride #Modesty

My family pride is something inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Pride #Helping #My Family

When you are lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is tabooed by anxiety, I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in without impropriety.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Lying #Anxiety #Use

Spurn not the nobly born with love affected; nor treat with virtuous scorn the well connected.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Born #Treats #Virtuous

There's a fascination frantic in a ruin that's romantic.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Fascination #Ruins

It isn't so much what's on the table that matters, as what's on the chairs.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Matter #Tables #Chairs

Man is nature's sole mistake.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Mistake #Men #Sole

I love my fellow creatures - I do all the good I can - yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable man!
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Love #Men #Creatures

Love, unrequited, robs me of my rest: Love, hopeless love, my ardent soul encumbers: Love, nightmare-like, lies heavy on my chest, And weaves itself into my midnight slumbers!
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Lying #Unrequited Love #Soul

When the enterprising burglar isn't burgling; When the cut-throat isn't occupied in crime; He loves to hear the little brook a-gurgling; And listen to the merry village chime.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Cutting #Loss #Village

I'm very good at integral and differential calculus, I know the scientific names of beings animalculous; In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral, I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Animal #Vegetables #Names

Saturday afternoon, although occurring at regular and well-foreseen intervals, always takes this railway by surprise.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Luck #Afternoon #Surprise

In all the woes that curse our race there is a lady in the case.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Women #Race #Woe

It's love that makes the world go round.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#World

I often think it's comical How Nature always does contrive That every boy and every gal That's born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Boys #Thinking #Alive

The idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, All centuries but this, and every country but his own.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Country #Tone #Idiot

If you're anxious to shine in the high aesthetic line as a man of culture rare, you must get up all the germs of the transcendental terms, and plant them everywhere.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Men #Shining #Lines

When every blessed thing you have is made of silver, or of gold, you long for simple pewter.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Blessed #Simple #Long

As is gloriously sung in the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta "H.M.S. Pinafore," in the words of W. S. Gilbert: "Things are seldom as they seem, Skim milk masquerades as cream."
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Milk #Masquerade #Cream

I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Facts #Ancestry #Descent

I am the Captain of the Pinafore ; And a right good captain too! . . . . And I'm never, never sick at sea! What, never? No, never! What never? Hardly ever! He's hardly ever sick at sea! Then give three cheers, and one cheer more, For the hardy Captain of the Pinafore!
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Cheer #Sea #Giving

Oh, wouldn't the world seem dull and flat with nothing whatever to grumble at?
-- W. S. Gilbert

#World #Dull #Flats

A policeman's lot is not a happy one
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Policemen

I am the very model of a modern major general
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Modern #Models

A popular speaker, however unpopular and insignificant, has only to wind up his speech with half-a-dozen lines of Shakespeare (and to make it clearly understood that they are Shakespeare's) and he will sit down amid thunders of applause.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Wind #Half #Dozen

My object all sublime I shall achieve in time- To let the punishment fit the crime- The punishment fit the crime.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Time #Punishment #Sublime

He did nothing in particular, and did it very well.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Work #Wells #Particular

Oh, don't the days seem lank and long When all goes right and nothing goes wrong, And isn't your life extremely flat With nothing whatever to grumble at!
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Life #Long #Flats

Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Giving #Statistics #Narrative

Ah, pray no mistake, We are not shy; We're very wide awake The Moon and I.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Mistake #Moon #Shy

The Law is the true embodiment of everything that's excellent; it has no kind of fault or flaw and I, my Lords, embody the Law.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Law #Embodiment #Faults

He led his regiment from behind. He found it less exciting.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Inspirational #Found #Exciting

There's fish in the sea, no doubt of it, As good as ever came out of it.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Sea #Fishing #Rivers

It is a glorious thing To be a Pirate King.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Kings #Pirate #Glorious

When in that House MPs divide/If they've a brain and cerebellum, too/They've got to leave that brain outside/And vote just as their leaders tell 'em to.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Mps #Leader #Political

The happiest hour a sailor sees Is when he's down At an inland town, With his Nancy on his knees, yo ho! And his arm around her waist!
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Sailing #Arms #Knees

I see no objection to stoutness, in moderation.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Moderation

I am the very model of a modern Major-General, I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral, I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical, From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Kings #Military #Fighting

Life's perhaps the only riddle That we shrink from giving up.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Life #Giving Up #Giving

Life's a pudding full of plums.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Life #Pudding #Plums

The privilege and pleasure That we treasure beyond measure Is to run on little errands for the Ministers of State.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Running #Errands #Treasure

See how the Fates their gifts allot, For A is happy-B is not. Yet B is worthy, I dare say, Of more prosperity than A.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Fate #Prosperity #Dare

Is life a boon? If so, it must befall That Death, whene'er he call, Must call too soon.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Death #Boon

When a felon s not engaged in his employment, Or maturing his felonious little plans, His capacity for innocent enjoyment Is just as great as any honest mans.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Littles #Felons #Employment

To sit in solemn silence on a dull, dark dock in a pestilential prison with a life-long lock awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock from a cheap and chippy chopper on a big, black block.
-- W. S. Gilbert

#Block #Dark #Long