Top 92 Quotes & Sayings by W. S. Gilbert
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English dramatist W. S. Gilbert.
Last updated on December 22, 2024.
Is life a boon? If so, it must befall That Death, whene'er he call, Must call too soon.
It is a glorious thing To be a Pirate King.
Faint heart never won fair lady!
Nothing venture, nothing win
Blood is thick, but water's thin
In for a penny, in for a pound
It's Love that makes the world go 'round!
I love my fellow creatures - I do all the good I can - yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable man!
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
Oh, wouldn't the world seem dull and flat with nothing whatever to grumble at?
You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases of complicated state of mind. The meaning doesn't matter if it's only idle chatter of a transcendental kind.
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!
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!
There's a fascination frantic in a ruin that's romantic.
My family pride is something inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering.
Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.
Roll on, thou ball, roll on!
Through pathless realms of Space,
Roll on!
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.
For duty, duty must be done; The rule applies to everyone.
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.
When every blessed thing you have is made of silver, or of gold, you long for simple pewter.
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
A man is but an ass
Who fights in a cuirass
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.
Life's perhaps the only riddle That we shrink from giving up.
Ah, pray no mistake, We are not shy; We're very wide awake The Moon and I.
No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have; and I think he's a dirty little beast.
Deerstalking would be a very fine sport if only the deer had guns.
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!
He did nothing in particular, and did it very well.
Things are seldom what they seem.
Wherever valor true is found, true modesty will there abound.
Saturday afternoon, although occurring at regular and well-foreseen intervals, always takes this railway by surprise.
Let the punishment fit the crime.
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.
In short, whoever you may be, To this conclusion you'll agree, When every one is somebodee, Then no one's anybody!
every Jack
He must study the knack
If he wants to make sure of his Jill!
My object all sublime I shall achieve in time- To let the punishment fit the crime- The punishment fit the crime.
Though I'm anything but clever, I could talk like that forever.
So I fell in love with a rich attorney's
Elderly ugly daughter.
The idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, All centuries but this, and every country but his own.
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.
The privilege and pleasure That we treasure beyond measure Is to run on little errands for the Ministers of State.
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
Darwinian man, though well-behaved, at best is only a monkey shaved.
After many unhappy experiments in the direction of an ideal Republic, it was found that what may be described as a Despotism tempered by Dynamite provides, on the whole, the most satisfactory description of ruler - an autocrat who dares not abuse his autocratic power.
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!
I'm really very sorry for you all, but it's an unjust world, and virtue is triumphant only in theatrical performances.
Life's a pudding full of plums.
It's love that makes the world go round.
Isn't your life extremely flat,With nothing to grumble at?
In all the woes that curse our race there is a lady in the case.
I accept refreshment at any hands, however lowly.
Life is a joke that's just begun.
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.
Utopia's quite another land;
In her enterprising movements,
She is England--with improvements
I know everybody's income and what everybody earns,
And I carefully compare it with the income-tax returns
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.
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.
It isn't so much what's on the table that matters, as what's on the chairs.
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."
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!
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.
Posterity will know as little of me as I know of posterity.
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