W.S. Gilbert Quotes

Life's perhaps the only riddle That we shrink from giving up.

When you are lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is tabooed by anxiety, I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in without impropriety.

I'm very good at integral and differential calculus, I know the scientific names of beings animalculous; In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral, I am the very model of a modern Major-General.

And the next day the gondolier came with a train of other gondoliers, all decked in their holiday garb, and on his gondola sat Angela, happy, and blushing at her happiness. Then he and she entered the house in which I dwelt, and came into my room (and it was strange indeed, after so many years of inversion, to see her with her head above her feet!), and then she wished me happiness and a speedy restoration to good health (which could never be); and I in broken words and with tears in my eyes, gave her the little silver crucifix that had stood by my bed or my table for so many years. And Angela took it reverently, and crossed herself, and kissed it, and so departed with her delighted husband.
And as I heard the song of the gondoliers as they went their way
the song dying away in the distance as the shadows of the sundown closed around me
I felt that they were singing the requiem of the only love that had ever entered my heart.

The happiest hour a sailor sees Is when he's down At an inland town, With his Nancy on his knees, yo ho! And his arm around her waist!

Roll on, thou ball, roll on!
Through pathless realms of Space

It isn't so much what's on the table that matters, as what's on the chairs.

Sing 'Hey to you - good-day to you'
Sing 'Bah to you - ha! ha! to you'
Sing 'Booh to you - pooh, pooh to you'
And that's what you should say!

I accept refreshment at any hands, however lowly.

Isn't your life extremely flat,With nothing to grumble at?

Ah, pray no mistake, We are not shy; We're very wide awake The Moon and I.

Utopia's quite another land;
In her enterprising movements,
She is England
with improvements

If the jests that you crack have an orthodox smack,
You may get a bland smile from these sages;
But should it, by chance, be imported from France,
Half-a-crown is stopped out of your wages!

Father, I am welling over with limpid joy! No sicklying taint of sorrow overlies the lucid lake of liquid love, upon which, hand in hand, Aline and I are to float into eternity!

Poverty is obsolete and hunger is abolished

See how the Fates their gifts allot, For A is happy-B is not. Yet B is worthy, I dare say, Of more prosperity than A.

He led his regiment from behind. He found it less exciting.

The meaning doesn't matter if it's only idle chatter of a transcendental kind.

I'm really very sorry for you all, but it's an unjust world, and virtue is triumphant only in theatrical performances.

If your master is surly, from getting up early
(And tempers are short in the morning),
An inopportune joke is enough to provoke
Him to give you, at once, a month's warning.

Society has quite forsaken all her wicked courses,
Which empties our police courts, and abolishes divorces.

I often think it's comical
How Nature always does contrive
That every boy and every gal
That's born into the world alive
Is either a little Liberal
Or else a little Conservative!

The privilege and pleasure That we treasure beyond measure Is to run on little errands for the Ministers of State.

Oh, wouldn't the world seem dull and flat with nothing whatever to grumble at?

As is gloriously sung in the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta "H.M.S. Pinafore," in the words of W. S. Gilbert: "Things are seldom as they seem, Skim milk masquerades as cream."

Oh, I am a cook and a captain bold,
And the mate of the Nancybrig,
And a bos'sun tight, and a midshipmite,
And the crew of the captain's gig!

In all the woes that curse our race there is a lady in the case.

Strike the concertina's melancholy string!
Blow the spirit-stirring harp like any thing!
Let the piano's martial blast
Rouse the Echoes of the Past

Though I'm anything but clever, I could talk like that forever.

What though I cannot meet my bills?
What though I suffer toothache's ills?
What though I swallow countless pills?

Things are seldom what they seem.

I mean to rule the earth,
As he the sky -
We really know our worth,
The sun and I

Bless your heart, they don't mind
they're exceedingly
kind
They don't blame you
as long as you're funny!

I am an acquired taste.

A policeman's lot is not a happy one

I love my fellow creatures - I do all the good I can - yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable man!

For duty, duty must be done; The rule applies to everyone.

A man is but an ass
Who fights in a cuirass

I know everybody's income and what everybody earns,
And I carefully compare it with the income-tax returns

And that singular anomaly, the lady novelist
I don't think she'd be missed
I'm sure she'd not be
missed!

Saturday afternoon, although occurring at regular and well-foreseen intervals, always takes this railway by surprise.

Who knows but we may count among our intellectual chickens
Like them an Earl of Thackeray and p'raps a Duke of
Dickens

This particularly rapid, unintelligible patter
Isn't generally heard, and if it is it doesn't matter,
This particularly rapid, unintelligible patter
Isn't generally heard, and if it is it doesn't matter,
matter, matter, matter, matter, matter,
matter, matter, matter, matter, matter!

There was an old man of St. Bees,
Who was stung in the arm by a wasp;
When they asked, "Does it hurt?"
He replied, "No, it doesn't,
But I thought all the while 'twas a Hornet.

Darwinian man, though well-behaved, at best is only a monkey shaved.

CHORUS
What, never?

CAPTAIN
No, never!

CHORUS
What, never?

CAPTAIN
Well, hardly ever!

On my face extended flat
I was walloped with a cat
For listening at the key-hole of the door.

Oh, dry the glistening tear that dues that marshal cheek
Thy loving childern here in them thy comfort seek
With sympathetic care their arms around the creep,
For oh they can not bear to see their father weep

Deerstalking would be a very fine sport if only the deer had guns.

Gilbert's response to being told they (the words 'ruddy' and 'bloody') meant the same thing was: Not at all, for that would mean that if I said that I admired your ruddy countenance, which I do, I would be saying that I liked your bloody cheek, which I don't.

I shall carry to the Catacombs of Age,
Photographically lined
On the tablet of my mind

Wherever valor true is found, true modesty will there abound.

When the enterprising burglar isn't burgling; When the cut-throat isn't occupied in crime; He loves to hear the little brook a-gurgling; And listen to the merry village chime.

If I can wheedle
A knife or a needle,
Why not a Silver Churn?