SaturdayMay 23, 2026
Quotes: 53419 Authors: 9969
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (October 30, 1751 - July 7, 1816) was an Irish playwright and Whig statesman.
You write with ease to show your breeding, But easy writing 's curst hard reading.
You shall see them on a beautiful quarto page, where a neat rivulet of text shall meander through a meadow of margin.
You 're our enemy; lead the way, and we 'll precede.
You are not like Cerberus, three gentlemen at once, are you?
While his off-heel, insidiously aside, Provokes the caper which he seems to chide.
Where they do agree on the stage, their unanimity is wonderful.
We will not anticipate the past; so mind, young people,our retrospection will be all to the future.
Too civil by half.
There 's nothing like being used to a thing.
The Spanish fleet thou canst not see, becauseit is not yet in sight!
The quarrel is a very pretty quarrel as it stands; we should only spoil it by trying to explain it.
The newspapers! Sir, they are the most villanous, licentious, abominable, infernal Not that I ever read them! No, I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper.
'T is safest in matrimony to begin with a little aversion.
Such protection as vultures give to lambs.
Steal! to be sure they may; and, egad, serve your best thoughts as gypsies do stolen children,disfigure them to make 'em pass for their own.
Sheer necessity,the proper parent of an art so nearly allied to invention.
Our ancestors are very good kind of folks; but they are the last people I should choose to have a visiting acquaintance with.
No scandal about Queen Elizabeth, I hope?
No caparisons, miss, if you please. Caparisons don't become a young woman.
My valour is certainly going! it is sneaking off! I feel it oozing out, as it were, at the palm of my hands!
Inconsolable to the minuet in Ariadne.
Illiterate him, I say, quite from your memory.
If I reprehend anything in this world, it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice derangement of epitaphs!
I own the soft impeachment.
I ne'er could any lustre see In eyes that would not look on me; I ne'er saw nectar on a lip But where my own did hope to sip.
I leave my character behind me.
Here is the whole set! a character dead at every word.
He is the very pine-apple of politeness!
Had I a heart for falsehood framed, I ne'er could injure you.
Egad, I think the interpreter is the hardest to be understood of the two!
Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics.
Certainly nothing is unnatural that is not physically impossible.
As there are three of us come on purpose for the game, you won't be so cantankerous as to spoil the party by sitting out.
As headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile.
An oyster may be crossed in love.
A life spent worthily should be measured by a nobler line,by deeds, not years.
A circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge.
My valor is certainly going!it is sneaking off! I feel it oozing out, as it were, at the palms of my hands!
Tale-bearers are as bad as tale-makers.
Heres to the maiden of bashful fifteen; Heres to the widow of fifty; Heres to the flaunting, extravagant queen; And heres to the housewife thats thrifty. Let the toast pass, Drink to the lass, Ill warrant shell prove an excuse for the glass.
Heres to the charmer whose dimples we prize; Now to the maid who has none, sir; Heres to the girl with a pair of blue eyes, And heres to the nymph with but one, sir.
The Right Honorable gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his facts.
Justiceaugust and pure, the abstract idea of all that would be perfect in the spirits and the inspirations of men!where the mind rises; where the heart expands; where the countenance is ever placid and benign; where her favorite attitude is to stoop to the unfortunate; to hear their cry and to help them; to rescue and relieve; to succor and save; majestic, from its mercy; venerable, from its Lutility; uplifted, without pride; firm without obduracy; beneficent in each preference; lovely, though in her frown!
Wont you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.
There is no trusting appearances.
It was an amiable weakness.
Good reading makes for damn hard writing.
In religion as in friendship, they who profess most are ever the least sincere.
Here's to the maiden of bashful fifteen; Here's to the widow of fifty; Here's to the flaunting, extravagant queen; And here's to the housewife that's thrifty.
An unforgiving eye, and a damned disinheriting countenance.
No caparisons, miss, if you please Caparisons don't become a young woman.
I wish, sir, you would practice this without me. I can't stay dying here all night.
They only babble who practice not reflection. I shall think; and thought is silence.
The surest way not to fail is to determine to succeed.
A progeny of learning.
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