Top 92 W.S. Gilbert Quotes
#1. In all the woes that curse our race there is a lady in the case.
W.S. Gilbert
#2. What though I cannot meet my bills?
What though I suffer toothache's ills?
What though I swallow countless pills?
W.S. Gilbert
#3. There's fish in the sea, no doubt of it, As good as ever came out of it.
W.S. Gilbert
#4. 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
#5. Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.
W.S. Gilbert
#6. 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
#7. On my face extended flat
I was walloped with a cat
For listening at the key-hole of the door.
W.S. Gilbert
#8. In short, whoever you may be, To this conclusion you'll agree, When every one is somebodee, Then no one's anybody!
W.S. Gilbert
#9. Though I'm anything but clever, I could talk like that forever.
W.S. Gilbert
#10. So I fell in love with a rich attorney's
Elderly ugly daughter.
W.S. Gilbert
#11. Utopia's quite another land;
In her enterprising movements,
She is England
with improvements
W.S. Gilbert
#12. Saturday afternoon, although occurring at regular and well-foreseen intervals, always takes this railway by surprise.
W.S. Gilbert
#13. I shall carry to the Catacombs of Age,
Photographically lined
On the tablet of my mind
W.S. Gilbert
#14. Deerstalking would be a very fine sport if only the deer had guns.
W.S. Gilbert
#15. 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
#16. Oh, wouldn't the world seem dull and flat with nothing whatever to grumble at?
W.S. Gilbert
#17. My object all sublime I shall achieve in time- To let the punishment fit the crime- The punishment fit the crime.
W.S. Gilbert
#18. The privilege and pleasure That we treasure beyond measure Is to run on little errands for the Ministers of State.
W.S. Gilbert
#19. 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
#21. Bind up their wounds - but look the other way.
W.S. Gilbert
#22. Gilbert's response to being told they (the words 'ruddy' and 'bloody') meant the same thing was: Not at all, for that would mean that if I said that I admired your ruddy countenance, which I do, I would be saying that I liked your bloody cheek, which I don't.
W.S. Gilbert
#23. 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.
W.S. Gilbert
#24. 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
#26. Oh, dry the glistening tear that dues that marshal cheek
Thy loving childern here in them thy comfort seek
With sympathetic care their arms around the creep,
For oh they can not bear to see their father weep
W.S. Gilbert
#27. 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
#28. 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
#29. 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
#30. Spurn not the nobly born with love affected; nor treat with virtuous scorn the well connected.
W.S. Gilbert
#31. CHORUS
What, never?
CAPTAIN
No, never!
CHORUS
What, never?
CAPTAIN
Well, hardly ever!
W.S. Gilbert
#32. When every blessed thing you have is made of silver, or of gold, you long for simple pewter.
W.S. Gilbert
#33. We yield at once with humbled mien,
Because, with all our faults, we love our Queen.
W.S. Gilbert
#34. 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
#35. I accept refreshment at any hands, however lowly.
W.S. Gilbert
#36. Ah, pray no mistake, We are not shy; We're very wide awake The Moon and I.
W.S. Gilbert
#37. Wafted by a favouring gale
As one sometimes is in trances,
To a height that few can scale,
Save by long and weary dances
W.S. Gilbert
#38. A man is but an ass
Who fights in a cuirass
W.S. Gilbert
#39. 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
#40. He led his regiment from behind. He found it less exciting.
W.S. Gilbert
#41. Isn't your life extremely flat,With nothing to grumble at?
W.S. Gilbert
#42. I see no objection to stoutness, in moderation.
W.S. Gilbert
#43. It isn't so much what's on the table that matters, as what's on the chairs.
W.S. Gilbert
#45. There was an old man of St. Bees,
Who was stung in the arm by a wasp;
When they asked, "Does it hurt?"
He replied, "No, it doesn't,
But I thought all the while 'twas a Hornet.
W.S. Gilbert
#46. Father, I am welling over with limpid joy! No sicklying taint of sorrow overlies the lucid lake of liquid love, upon which, hand in hand, Aline and I are to float into eternity!
W.S. Gilbert
#47. I know everybody's income and what everybody earns,
And I carefully compare it with the income-tax returns
W.S. Gilbert
#48. 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
#49. 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
#50. 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
#51. Every Jack
He must study the knack
If he wants to make sure of his Jill!
W.S. Gilbert
#52. 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
#53. Posterity shall know of me even less than I shall know of posterity.
W.S. Gilbert
#54. 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
#55. 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
#57. This particularly rapid, unintelligible patter
Isn't generally heard, and if it is it doesn't matter,
This particularly rapid, unintelligible patter
Isn't generally heard, and if it is it doesn't matter,
matter, matter, matter, matter, matter,
matter, matter, matter, matter, matter!
W.S. Gilbert
#58. Wherever valor true is found, true modesty will there abound.
W.S. Gilbert
#59. 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
#60. 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
#61. 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
#62. Roll on, thou ball, roll on!
Through pathless realms of Space
W.S. Gilbert
#63. 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
#64. The idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, All centuries but this, and every country but his own.
W.S. Gilbert
#65. Society has quite forsaken all her wicked courses,
Which empties our police courts, and abolishes divorces.
W.S. Gilbert
#66. The meaning doesn't matter if it's only idle chatter of a transcendental kind.
W.S. Gilbert
#67. 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
#69. No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have, and I think he's a dirty little beast.
W.S. Gilbert
#70. Life's perhaps the only riddle That we shrink from giving up.
W.S. Gilbert
#71. Poverty is obsolete and hunger is abolished
W.S. Gilbert
#72. 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
#73. Darwinian man, though well-behaved, at best is only a monkey shaved.
W.S. Gilbert
#75. 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
#77. 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
#78. 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
#79. 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
#80. I love my fellow creatures - I do all the good I can - yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable man!
W.S. Gilbert
#81. Sing 'Hey to you - good-day to you'
Sing 'Bah to you - ha! ha! to you'
Sing 'Booh to you - pooh, pooh to you'
And that's what you should say!
W.S. Gilbert
#82. 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
#83. 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
#84. Posterity will know as little of me as I know of posterity.
W.S. Gilbert
#85. When everyone is somebody, then no one's anybody.
W.S. Gilbert
#86. 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
#87. 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
#88. If I can wheedle
A knife or a needle,
Why not a Silver Churn?
W.S. Gilbert
#89. 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
#90. I am a child of Nature, and take after my mother.
W.S. Gilbert
#91. 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
#92. For duty, duty must be done; The rule applies to everyone.
W.S. Gilbert
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