All Quotes by W. S. Gilbert
“A popular speaker, however unpopular and insignificant, has only to wind up his speech with half-a-dozen lines of Shakespeare (and to make it clearly understood that they are Shakespeare's) and he will sit down amid thunders of applause.”
“She may very well pass for forty threeIn the dusk with the light behind her.”
“But I submit, my lord, with all submission,To marry two at once is Burglaree!”
“Oh! my name is John Wellington Wells,Number seventy, Simmery Axe!”
“Or you or I must yield up his life to Ahrimanes. I would rather it were you.”
“From such a face and form as mine, the noblest sentiments sound like the black utterances of a depraved imagination! It's human nature! I'm resigned.”
“What, never? / No, never! / What, never? / Well, hardly ever!”
“Things are seldom what they seem;Skim milk masquerades as cream.”
“Now landsmen all, whoever you may be,And you all may be Rulers of the Queen's Navee.”
“The last three ships we took proved to be manned entirely by orphans, and so we had to let them go. One would think that Great Britain’s mercantile navy was recruited solely from her orphan asylums – which we know is not the case.”
“When your process of extermination begins, let our deaths be as swift and painless as you can conveniently make them.”
“No, Frederic, it cannot be. I don’t think much of our profession, but, contrasted with respectability, it is comparatively honest.”
“Against our wills, papa—against our wills!”
“Exactly – you said "often", frequently, only once.”
“If you want a receipt for that popular mystery,Rattle them off to a popular tune!”
“Art stopped short at the cultivated court of the Empress Josephine.”
“Then a sentimental passion of a vegetable fashion must excite your languid spleen,If you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily in your medieval hand.”
“Yes, I am the Apostle of Simplicity. I am called Archibald the All-Right, for I am infallible.”
“Archibald: To understand this, it is not necessary to think of anything at all.Saphir: Let us think of nothing at all!”
“I know what love is. There was a happy time when I didn't, but bitter experience has taught me.”
“A pallid and thin young man,Foot-in-the-grave young man!”
“The Law is the true embodimentAnd I, my Lords, embody the Law.”
“The House of Peers, thoughout the warAnd did it very well.”
“I can tell a woman's age in half a minute — and I do!”
“...Darwinian Man, though well-behav’d,At best is only a monkey shav’d!”
“Man is nature's sole mistake.”
“I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable. I can’t help it. I was born sneering.”
“No money, no grovel! (Actually an ad-lib introduced by Rutland Barrington when playing the rôle of Pooh-Bah, to the annoyance of Gilbert.)”
“…in the first place, self decapitation is an extremely difficult, not to say dangerous, thing to attempt; and, in the second, it’s suicide, and suicide is a capital offence.”
“Pooh Bah: This professional conscientiousness is highly creditable to you, but it places us in a very awkward position.Koko: My good sir, the awkwardness of your position is grace itself compared with that of a man engaged in the act of cutting off his own head.”
“To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock,From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!”
“[Koko is negotiating the terms by which he can behead Nanki-Poo in his place, and they involve letting the latter be married to his fiance until he is executed]Nanki-Poo: Not nearly so unpleasant as mine at the end of it.”
“I have a left shoulder-blade that is a miracle of loveliness. People come miles to see it. My right elbow has a fascination that few can resist.”
“Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.”
“...but it's an unjust world, and virtue is triumphant only in theatrical performances.”
“As someday it may happen that a victim must be foundAnd who never would be missed—who never would be missed!”
“My object all sublimeThe punishment fit the crime.”
“I know a youth who loves a little maid—(Hey, but he's timid as a youth can be!)”
“My eyes are fully open to my awful situation, I shall go at once to Roderic and make him an oration,And a word or two of compliment my vanity would flatter, but I've got to die to-morrow, so it really doesn't matter!”
“When maiden loves, she sits and sighs,With a sad "heigh ho!"”
“Heigh-dy! Heigh-dy!As he sighed for the love of a ladye!”
“Is life a boon?Must call too soon.”
“I should have preferred to ride through the streets of Venice; but owing, I presume, to an unusually wet season, the streets are in such a condition that equestrian exercise is impractical.”
“In enterprise of martial kind,He found it less exciting.”
“One of you may be Baptisto's son, for anything I know to the contrary; but the other is no less a personage than the only son of the late King of Barataria. ... And I trust — I trust it was that one who slapped me on the shoulder and called me his man!”
“Of that there is no manner of doubt—No possible doubt whatever.”
“Oh, philosophers may singIs the gratifying feeling that our duty has been done.”
“The end is easily foretold,Then no one's anybody!”
“There's a little group of isles beyond the wave,With half a score invincible battalions.”
“You have a daughter, Captain Reese,Unmarried members of the crew.”
“Oh, I am a cook and a captain boldAnd the crew of the captain's gig.”
“Roll on, thou ball, roll onRoll on!”
“It's true I've got no shirts to wear,(It rolls on.)”
“He is an Englishman!He remains an Englishman.”
“I love my fellow-creatures, I do all the good I can,And I can't think why!”
“Ah, take one consideration with anotherA policeman's lot is not a happy one!”
“Bad language or abuseI never use a big, big D-”
“The Law is the true embodimentAnd I, my Lords, embody the Law.”
“On a tree by a river a little tomtit"Oh, Willow, titwillow, titwillow!"”
“Life's a pudding full of plums;Let us take it as it comes!”
“As innocent as a new-laid egg.”