An unforgiving eye, and a damned disinheriting countenance!
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Father, Fathers
Won’t you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Perspective
He is the very pineapple of politeness!
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Manners
I open with a clock striking, to beget an awful attention in the audience—it also marks the time, which is four o clock in the morning, and saves a description of the rising sun, and a great deal about gilding the eastern hemisphere.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Theater
The surest way to fail is not to determine to succeed.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Failure
My valor is certainly going, it is sneaking off! I feel it oozing out as it were, at the palms of my hands!
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Coward, Cowardice
Tale bearers are just as bad as tale makers.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Gossip
Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Conscience
Here, my dear Lucy, hide these books. Quick, quick! Fling “Peregrine Pickle” under the toilette—throw “Roderick Random” into the closet—put “The Innocent Adultery” into “The Whole Duty of Man” thrust “Lord Aimworth” under the sofa! cram “Ovid” behind the bolster; there—put “The Man of Feeling” into your pocket. Now for them.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Reading
A man may surely be allowed to take a glass of wine by his own fireside.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Wine
Madam, a circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge; it blossoms through the year. And depend on it that they who are so fond of handling the leaves, will long for the fruit at last.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Libraries
Wit loses its respect with the good, when seen in company with malice; and to smile at the jest which places a thorn in another’s breast, is to become a principal in the mischief.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Wit
The surest way not to fail is to determine to succeed.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Success
Steal! to be sure they may, and, egad, serve your best thoughts as gipsies do stolen children—disfigure them to make them pass for their own.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Plagiarism
Modesty is a quality in a lover more praised by the women than liked.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Humility, Modesty
Remember that when you meet your antagonist, to do everything in a mild agreeable manner. Let your courage be keen, but, at the same time, as polished as your sword.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Conflict
When of a gossiping circle it was asked, What are they doing? The answer was, Swapping lies.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Gossip
Easy writings curse is hard reading.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Writing, Authors & Writing, Writers
Ay, ay, the best terms will grow obsolete: damns have had their day.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Vulgarity, Profanity, Swearing
The Right Honourable Gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his facts.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Memory, Humor
You know it is not my interest to pay the principal, or my principal to pay the interest.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Debt
Our memories are independent of our wills. It is not easy to forget.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Memory, Memories
There is a set of malicious, prating, prudent gossips, both male and female, who murder characters to kill time; and will rob a young fellow of his good name before he has years to know the value of it.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Gossip
That old man dies prematurely whose memory records no benefits conferred. They only have lived long who have lived virtuously.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Aging, Age
There is nothing on earth so easy as to forget, if a person chooses to set about it. I’m sure I have as much forgot your poor, dear uncle, as if he had never existed; and I thought it my duty to do so.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Many a wretch had rid on a hurdle who has done much less mischief than utterers of forged tales, coiners of scandal, and clippers of reputation.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
For if there is anything to one’s praise, it is foolish vanity to be gratified at it, and if it is abuse—why one is always sure to hear of it from one damned good-natured friend or another!
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Critics, Criticism
Those that vow the most are the least sincere.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Sincerity
They only babble who practise not reflection.—I shall think; and thought is silence.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Reflection
Pity those who nature abuses; never those who abuse nature.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Sympathy, Nature
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- C. S. Lewis Irish-born Author, Scholar
- William Shakespeare British Playwright
- Dorothy L. Sayers English Novelist, Playwright
- Dodie Smith American Author
- Graham Greene British Novelist
- George Bernard Shaw Irish Playwright
- William Congreve English Dramatist
- Winston Churchill British Head of State
- Clare Boothe Luce American Playwright
- J. B. Priestley British Novelist, Playwright, Essayist
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