W.S. Gilbert Quotes

Thinking in isolation and with pride ends in being an idiot.

Oh, most unhappy man,' he cried, 'try to be happy! You have red hair like your sister.' My red hair, like red flames, shall burn up the world,' said Gregory.

Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision.

There is a corollary to the conception of being too proud to fight. It is that the humble have to do most of the fighting.

I have little doubt that when St. George had killed the dragon he was heartily afraid of the princess.

Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline.

Well, if I am not drunk, I am mad," replied Syme with perfect calm; "but I trust I can behave like a gentleman in either condition.

The modern materialists are not permitted to doubt; they are forbidden to believe.

Even a bad shot is dignified when he accepts a duel.

It is impossible without humility to enjoy anything - even pride.

Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest. But what does he do if there is no forest? He grows a forest to hide it in.

What are we going to do?" asked the Professor. "At this moment," said Syme, with a scientific detachment, "I think we are going to smash into a lamppost.

I am the fool in this story, and no rebel shall hurl me from my throne.

I did try to found a little heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.

And though St. John saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators.

if a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small.

somehow one must love the world without being worldly.

When the chord of monotony is stretched to its tightest, it breaks with the sound of a song.

My life is passed in making bad jokes and seeing them turn into true prophecies.

I am more than a devil; I am a man. I can do the one thing which Satan himself cannot do— I can die.

If the devil tells you something is too fearful to look at, look at it. If he says something is too terrible to hear, hear it. If you think some truth unbearable, bear it.

of being strong and brave. The strong can not be brave. Only the weak can be brave; and yet again, in practice, only those who can be brave can be trusted, in time of doubt, to be strong.

Like every book I never wrote, it is by far the best book I have ever written.

What was wonderful about childhood is that anything in it was a wonder. It was not merely a world full of miracles; it was a miraculous world.

She had never really listened to anyone in her life; which, some said, was why she had survived.

A man cannot deserve adventures; he cannot earn dragons and hippogriffs.

I will not call it my philosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it made me.

Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian.

People seem to fight about things very unsuitable for fighting. They make a frightful noise in support of very quiet things. They knock each other about in the name of very fragile things.

A man must be orthodox upon most things, or he will never even have time to preach his own heresy.

We can be almost certain of being wrong about the future, if we are wrong about the past.

There is a case for telling the truth; there is a case for avoiding the scandal; but there is no possible defense for the man who tells the scandal, but does not tell the truth

He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it.

If prosperity is regarded as the reward of virtue it will be regarded as the symptom of virtue.

It is still bad taste to be an avowed atheist. But now it is equally bad taste to be an avowed Christian.

There is no bigot like the atheist.

The atheist is not interested in anything except attacks on atheism.

Even in an empire of atheists the dead man is always sacred.

Somehow one can never manage to be an atheist.

A change of opinions is almost unknown in an elderly military man.

The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade other people how good they are.

All the exaggerations are right, if they exaggerate the right thing.

We have had no good comic operas of late, because the real world has been more comic than any possible opera.

Aesthetes never do anything but what they are told.

I still hold. . .that the suburbs ought to be either glorified by romance and religion or else destroyed by fire from heaven, or even by firebrands from the earth.

To hurry through one's leisure is the most unbusiness-like of actions.

[Marxism will] in a generation or so [go] into the limbo of most heresies, but meanwhile it will have poisoned the Russian Revolution.

War is not the best way of settling differences; it is the only way of preventing their being settled for you.

How quickly revolutions grow old; and, worse still, respectable.

The unconscious democracy of America is a very fine thing. It is a true and deep and instinctive assumption of the equality of citizens, which even voting and elections have not destroyed.