Richard Brinsley Sheridan: Trending quotes

“As there are three of us come on purpose for the game, you won't be so cantankerous as to spoil the party by sitting out.”

Reported in Nicholas Harris Nicolas, The Carcanet: a Literary Album, Containing Select Passages from the Most Distinguished English Writers (1828), p. 132.

“You are not like Cerberus, three gentlemen at once, are you?”

Act V, sc. iii.
The Rivals (1775)

“Death's a debt; his mandamus binds all alike — no bail, no demurrer.”

Act IV, sc. ii.
The Rivals (1775)

“I ne'er could any luster see
In eyes that would not look on me.”

St. Patrick's Day (1775), Act II, sc. iv.

“The newspapers! Sir, they are the most villainous — licentious — abominable — infernal — Not that I ever read them — no — I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper.”

Act I, sc. ii.
The Duenna (1775)

“Where they do agree on the stage, their unanimity is wonderful.”

Act I, sc. i.
The Critic (1779)

“Certainly nothing is unnatural that is not physically impossible.”

Act II, sc. ii.
The Critic (1779)

“Here is the whole set! a character dead at every word.”

Act II, sc. i.
The Critic (1779)

Richard Brinsley Sheridan The School for Scandal

Act II, sc. ii.
The School for Scandal (1777)

“Date not the life which thou hast run by the mean of reckoning of the hours and days, which though hast breathed: a life spent worthily should be measured by a nobler line, — by deeds, not years…”

“Through all the drama — whether damned or not —
Love gilds the scene, and women guide the plot.”

Pizarro (first acted 24 May 1799), Act iv, Scene 1. Compare: "Who well lives, long lives; for this age of ours / Should not be numbered by years, daies, and hours", Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, Second Week, Fourth Day, Book ii.

“Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics.”

Epilogue.
The Rivals (1775)

“A practitioner in panegyric, or, to speak more plainly, a professor of the art of puffing.”

Act II, sc. iv.
The Duenna (1775)

“If I reprehend anything in this world, it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice derangement of epitaphs!”

Act I, sc. ii.
The Critic (1779)