W.S. Gilbert Quotes

If you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will have no answer except slanging or silence.

For fear of the newspapers politicians are dull, and at last they are too dull even for the newspapers.

It is hard to make government representative when it is also remote.

With all that we hear of American hustle and hurry, it is rather strange that Americans seem to like to linger on longer words.

It is true that I am of an older fashion; much that I love has been destroyed or sent into exile.

Over-civilization and barbarism are within an inch of each other. And a mark of both is the power of medicine-men.

By experts in poverty I do not mean sociologists, but poor men.

A man imagines a happy marriage as a marriage of love; even if he makes fun of marriages that are without love, or feels sorry for lovers who are without marriage.

Women have a thirst for order and beauty as for something physical; there is a strange female power of hating ugliness and waste as good men can only hate sin and bad men virtue.

It's not that we don't have enough scoundrels to curse; it's that we don't have enough good men to curse them.

The whole truth is generally the ally of virtue; a half-truth is always the ally of some vice.

Truth is sacred; and if you tell the truth too often nobody will believe it.

All but the hard hearted man must be torn with pity for this pathetic dilemma of the rich man, who has to keep the poor man just stout enough to do the work and just thin enough to have to do it.

[Capitalism is] that commercial system in which supply immediately answers to demand, and in which everybody seems to be thoroughly dissatisfied and unable to get anything he wants.

The decay of society is praised by artists as the decay of a corpse is praised by worms.

Savages and modern artists are alike strangely driven to create something uglier than themselves. but the artists find it harder.

The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say.

The professional soldier gains more and more power as the general courage of a community declines.

Because our expression is imperfect we need friendship to fill up the imperfections.

The only object of liberty is life.

Religious unity can look like a carnival and religious liberty can look like a funeral.

When a man ceases to believe in god, he does not believe in nothing. He believes in everything.

A large section of the intelligentsia seems wholly devoid of intelligence.

Why be something to everybody when you can be everything to somebody?

Man is at his tallest when he bows.

Spring never is spring unless it comes too soon.

The power which makes a man able to entertain a good impulse is the same as that which enables him to make a good gun; it is imagination.

The old religionist cried out for his god. The new religionist cries out for some god to be his.

Playing as children means playing is the most serious thing in the world.

Most Americans are born drunk, and really require a little wine or beer to sober them.

Do not, I beseech you be troubled by the increase of forces already in dissolution. You have mistake the hour of the night: it is already morning.

The past is democratic, because it is a people. The future is despotic, because it is a caprice. Every man is alone in his prediction, just as each man is alone in a dream.

Evil comes at leisure like the disease. Good comes in a hurry like the doctor.

It is not greedy to enjoy a good dinner, any more than it is to enjoy a good concert. But I do think there is something greedy about trying to enjoy the dinner and the concert at the same time.

The miser is the man who starves himself and everybody else, in order to worship wealth in its dead form, as distinct from its living form.

It is the root of all religion that a man knows that he is nothing in order to thank God that he is something.

There is something to be said for every error; but, whatever may be said for it, the most important thing to be said about it is that it is erroneous.

Contemporary society has become dry, not for lack of wonders but for lack of wonder.

History is not a toboggan slide, but a road to be reconsidered and even retraced

...it is not necessary to the child to awaken to the sense of the strange and humorous by giving a man a luminous nose...to the child it is sufficiently strange and humorous to have a nose at all.

We must be clear about what we want to paint. This adds a further principle to our previous list of principles. We have said we must be fond of this world, even in order to change it.

The big corporation is not in the least remarkable for efficiency; it is only too big to be blamed for its inefficiency.

Americans are a very backward people, with all the real virtues of a backward people; the patriarchal simplicity and human dignity of a democracy, and a respect for labor uncorrupted by cynicism.

In truth the Church is too unique to prove herself unique. For most popular and easy proof is by parallel; and here there is no parallel.

Man is not merely an evolution but rather a revolution.

It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch.

Whether a man chooses to tell the truth in long sentences or short jokes is a problem analogous to whether he chooses to tell the truth in French or in German.

Every man is important if he loses his life;and every man is funny if he loses his hat and has to run after it.

The modern world is filled with men who hold dogmas so strongly that they do not even know they are dogmas.

We do not want, as the newspapers say, a church that will move with the world. We want a church that will move the world.