Richard Brinsley Sheridan citations

Page 2

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

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

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

“A bumper of good liquor
Will end a contest quicker
Than justice, judge, or vicar.”

“As headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile.”

“No scandal about Queen Elizabeth, I hope?”

“Egad, I think the interpreter is the hardest to be understood of the two!”

“Here's to the maiden of bashful fifteen;
Here's to the widow of fifty;
Here's to the flaunting, extravegant quean,
And here's to the housewife that's thrifty.
Let the toast pass —
Drink to the lass;
I'll warrant she'll prove an excuse for the glass.”

“You had no taste when you married me.”

“A circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge.”

“No caparisons, miss, if you please. Caparisons don't become a young woman.”

“I own the soft impeachment.”

“An oyster may be crossed in love.”

“I wish, sir, you would practice this without me. I can't stay dying here all night.”

“You write with ease to show your breeding,
But easy writing's curst hard reading.”

“Such protection as vultures give to lambs.”

“There's nothing like being used to a thing.”

“Inconsolable to the minuet in Ariadne.”

“Had I a heart for falsehood framed,
I ne'er could injure you.”

“Our ancestors are very good kind of folks; but they are the last people I should choose to have a visiting acquaintance with.”

“I know you are laughing in your sleeve.”

“Tis safest in matrimony to begin with a little aversion.”

“You shall see them on a beautiful quarto page, where a neat rivulet of text shall meander through a meadow of margin.”

“Too civil by half.”

“A progeny of learning.”

“My valour is certainly going!”

“Take our constitution, wanting certainly as it did many reforms, yet, practically, it afforded the best security that human wisdom had ever given to man.”