Darkness is fled.—Now flowers unfold their beauties to the sun, and blushing, kiss the beam he sends to wake them.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Morning
Those that vow the most are the least sincere.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Sincerity
Tale bearers are just as bad as tale makers.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Gossip
Our ancestors are very good kind of folks, but they are the last people I should choose to have a visiting acquaintance with.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Ancestors
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: Cowardice, Coward
They only babble who practise not reflection.—I shall think; and thought is silence.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Reflection
You know it is not my interest to pay the principal, or my principal to pay the interest.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Debt
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
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
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
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
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: Criticism, Critics
Pity those who nature abuses; never those who abuse nature.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Nature, Sympathy
Our memories are independent of our wills. It is not easy to forget.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Memory, Memories
A life spent worthily should be measured by deeds, not years.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Deeds
When delicate and feeling souls are separated, there is not a feature in the sky, not a movement of the elements, not an aspiration of the breeze, but hints some cause for a lover’s apprehension.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Aspirations, Absence
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
When of a gossiping circle it was asked, What are they doing? The answer was, Swapping lies.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Gossip
The surest way not to fail is to determine to succeed.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Success
Modesty is a quality in a lover more praised by the women than liked.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Modesty, Humility
Satires and lampoons on particular people circulate more by giving copies in confidence to the friends of the parties, than by printing them.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Conscience
The surest way to fail is not to determine to succeed.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Failure
A man may surely be allowed to take a glass of wine by his own fireside.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Wine
The Right Honourable Gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his facts.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Humor, Memory
An unforgiving eye, and a damned disinheriting countenance!
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Fathers, Father
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
Women govern us; let us try to render them more perfect. The more they are enlightened, so much the more we shall be. On the cultivation of the minds of women, depends the wisdom of man.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Woman
Ay, ay, the best terms will grow obsolete: damns have had their day.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Vulgarity, Swearing, Profanity
That old man dies prematurely whose memory records no benefits conferred. They only have lived long who have lived virtuously.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Topics: Age, Aging
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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