I love my fellow creatures—I do all the good I can—yet everybody says I’m such a disagreeable man!
—W. S. Gilbert
Topics: Charity
He led his regiment from behind –
He found it less exciting.
But when away his regiment ran,
His place was at the fore, O.
—W. S. Gilbert
Topics: The Military, Leadership
When constabulary duty’s to be done, a policeman’s lot is not a happy one.
—W. S. Gilbert
Topics: Law
Darwinian man, though well-behaved, at best is only a monkey shaved.
—W. S. Gilbert
Topics: Evolution
My family pride is something inconceivable. I can’t help it. I was born sneering.
—W. S. Gilbert
Topics: Pride
I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule.
—W. S. Gilbert
Topics: Ancestors, Ancestry
When every blessed thing you have is made of silver, or of gold, you long for simple pewter.
—W. S. Gilbert
Topics: Reality, Opportunities
I always voted at my party’s call, and I never thought of thinking for myself at all.
—W. S. Gilbert
Topics: Voting, Elections
I often think it’s comical how nature always does contrive that every boy and every gal, that’s born into this world alive, is either a little Liberal, or else a little Conservative.
—W. S. Gilbert
The idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, All centuries but this, and every country but his own.
—W. S. Gilbert
Topics: Satisfaction
Deer hunting would be fine sport, if only the deer had guns.
—W. S. Gilbert
Topics: Hunting
Love, unrequited, robs me of my rest:
Love, hopeless love, my ardent soul encumbers:
Love, nightmare-like, lies heavy on my chest,
And weaves itself into my midnight slumbers!
—W. S. Gilbert
Matrimonial devotion doesn’t seem to suit her notion.
—W. S. Gilbert
Topics: Marriage
Oh, wouldn’t the world seem dull and flat with nothing whatever to grumble at?
—W. S. Gilbert
Topics: Complaining
Down went the owners—greedy men whom hope of gain allured: oh, dry the starting tear, for they were heavily insured.
—W. S. Gilbert
Topics: Disasters, Tragedy
No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have; and I think he’s a dirty little beast.
—W. S. Gilbert
Topics: Opinions, Opinion
It isn’t so much what’s on the table that matters, as what’s on the chairs.
—W. S. Gilbert
Topics: Eating, Food
You have no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself; and how little I deserve it.
—W. S. Gilbert
Topics: Inferiority
Things are seldom what they seem.
—W. S. Gilbert
Topics: Appearance
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