W.S. Gilbert Quotes

To say that a man is an idealist is merely to say that he is a man.

If the common man in the past had a grave respect for property, it may conceivably have been because he sometimes had some of his own.

If an editor can only make people angry enough, they will write half his newspaper for him for nothing.

There is nothing so weak, for working purposes, as this enormous importance attached to immediate victory. There is nothing that fails like success.

We are all ordinary people. And it's the extraordinary people Who know it.

One can hardly think too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much of one's soul.

There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic ignorance.

Gratitude, being nearly the greatest of human duties, is also nearly the most difficult.

English experience indicates that when the two great political parties agree about something it is generally wrong.

The reason that angels fly is that they take themselves so lightly.

Physical science is like simple addition: it is either infallible or it is false.

If the apple hit Newton’s nose, Newton’s nose hit the apple.

Christian Science … is the direct denial both of science and of Christianity, for Science rests wholly on the recognition of truth and Christianity on the recognition of pain.

It is a mathematical fact that if a line be not perfectly directed towards a point, it will actually go further away from it as it comes nearer to it.

The Party System was founded on one national notion of fair play. It was the notion that folly and futility should be fairly divided between both sides.

Nothing is so remote from us as the thing which is not old enough to be history and not new enough to be news.

Facts by themselves can often feed the flame of madness, because sanity is a spirit.

We ought to be interested in that darkest and most real part of a man in which dwell not the vices that he does not display, but the virtues that he cannot.

I am not fighting a hopeless fight. People who have fought in real fights don't, as a rule.

Whatever the word "great" means, Dickens was what it means.

America has a new delicacy, a coarse, rank refinement.

If you know what a man's doing, get in front of him; but if you want to guess what he's doing keep behind him.

If you convey to a woman that something ought to be done, there is always a dreadful danger that she will suddenly do it.

Before the gods that made the gods Had seen their sunrise pass, The White Horse of the White Horse Vale Was cut out of the grass.

The central idea of poetry is the idea of guessing right, like a child.

One pleasure attached to growing older is that many things seem to be growing younger; growing fresher and more lively than we once supposed them to be.

The only people who seem to have nothing to do with the education of the children are the parents.

If our caricaturists do not hate their enemies, it is not because they are too big to hate them, but because their enemies are not big enough to hate.

Ivory may not be so white as snow, but the whole Arctic continent does not make ivory black.

I still believe in liberalism today as much as I ever did, but, oh, there was a happy time when I believed in liberals.

It is the chief value of legend to mix up the centuries while preserving the sentiment.

Every heresy has been an effort to narrow the Church.

All literary style, especially national style, is made up of such coincidences, which are a spiritual sort of puns. That is why style is untranslatable.

The truth is that there are no things for which men will make such herculean efforts as the things of which they know they are unworthy.

Aristocracy: government by the badly educated.

The human race is always trying this dodge of making everything entirely easy; but the difficulty which it shifts off one thing it shifts to another.

When "everyone knows" that something is so, it is always more interesting and often illuminating to assumeexactly the opposite, and to see where that leads.

Plato was only a Bernard Shaw who unfortunately made his jokes in Greek.

And pray where in earth or heaven are there prudent marriages-Might as well talk about prudent suicides.

All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death.

An almost unnatural vigilance is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old.

You may think a crime horrible because you could never commit it. I think it is horrible because I could commit it.

We actually love ourselves more than we love joy.

The great saint may be said to mix all his thoughts with thanks. All goods look better when they look like gifts.

I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all.

Not only does "orthodox" no longer mean being right, it practically means being wrong.

And it is always the humble man who talks too much; the proud man watches himself too closely.

Every politician is emphatically a promising politician.

Ingratitude is surely the chief of the intellectual sins of man. He takes his political benefits for granted, just as he takes the skies and the seasons for granted.

It was the people who did not care who filled the world with fire and oppression. It was the hands of the indifferent that lit the faggots; it was the hands of the indifferent that turned the rack.