W.S. Gilbert Quotes
The one created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the light of which we look at everything.
The secularists have not wrecked divine things; but the secularists have wrecked secular things, if that is any comfort to them. The Titans did not scale heaven; but they laid waste the world.
There are a good many fools who call me a friend, and also a good many friends who call me a fool.
It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things forbidden.
Teach to the young, men's enduring truths, and let the learned amuse themselves with their passing errors.
Let us not decide what is good, but let it be considered good not to decide it.
People decided that it was impossible to achieve any of the good of Socialism, but they comforted themselves by achieving all the bad.
It is the first law of practical courage. To be in the weakest camp is to be in the strongest school.
Do not look at the faces in the illustrated papers. Look at the faces in the street.
Stated baldly, charity certainly means one of two things–pardoning unpardonable acts, or loving unlovable people.
The old assumption of the approximate impossibility of war really rested on a similar assumption about the impossibility of evil-and especially of evil in high places.
'As you have made your bed, so you must lie on it'; which again is simply a lie. If I have made my bed uncomfortable, please God I will make it again.
We are like the penny, because we have the image of the king stamped on us, the divine king.
The long words are not the hard words, it is the short words that are hard. There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the word "damn" than in the word "degeneration."
In all legends men have thought of women as sublime separately but horrible in a herd.
This is the age in which thin and theoretic minorities can cover and conquer unconscious and untheoretic majorities.
Puritanism was an honourable mood; it was a noble fad. In other words, it was a highly creditable mistake.
To the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sun is really a sun; to the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sea is really a sea.
Price is a crazy and incalculable thing, while Value is an intrinsic and indestructible thing.
There is only one thing that stands in our midst, attenuated and threatened, but enthroned in some power like a ghost of the Middle Ages: the Trade Unions.
Making the landlord and the tenant the same person has certain advantages, as that the tenant pays no rent, while the landlord does a little work.
The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid.
There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally.
Just the other day in the Underground I enjoyed the pleasure of offering my seat to three ladies.
Some of the most frantic lies on the face of life are told with modesty and restraint; for the simple reason that only modesty and restraint will save them.
The mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet's; but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatic's.
Mankind is not a tribe of animals to which we owe compassion. Mankind is a club to which we owe our subscription.
The one mistake which is committed habitually by people who have the gift of half-genius, is waiting for inspiration.
Spurn not the nobly born with love affected; nor treat with virtuous scorn the well connected.
In 15 years we'll have all the sequence, a list of the genes everyone has in common and those that differ among people. We know only something like a tenth of 1 percent of the sequence at the moment.
People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.
I was a veritable Johnny Appleseed of grand expectations, and all I reaped for my trouble was a harvest of bitter fruit.
I think you have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding peace in God. You take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and you keep moving toward the light.
Given that life is so short, do I really want to spend one-ninetieth of my remaining days on earth reading Edward Gibbon?
It kind of struck me how great it would be to go out with a guy that size. And if you, you know, got tired of dating him, you could always use him as a house or something.
I hate it when people make fun of me and it turns out they're right.
the great lack of parity between husbands and wives has always been spawned by the disproportionate degree of self-sacrifice that women are willing to make on behalf of those they love.
