W. S. Gilbert Quotes

1836–1911, British Librettist
quotes
13
topics
12
Origin
Topic
“Matrimonial devotion doesn't seem to suit her notion.”
Fidelity
“...Darwinian Man, though well-behav’d, At best is only a monkey shav’d!”
VerifiedPrincess Ida (1884) · evidenceEvolution
“It isn't so much what's on the table that matters, as what's on the chairs.”
Food and Eating
“My family pride is something inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering.”
VerifiedThe Mikado (1885) · evidencePride
“You have no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself; and how little I deserve it.”
Inferiority
“I always voted at my party's call, and I never thought of thinking for myself at all.”
Elections
“No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have; and I think he's a dirty little beast.”
Opinions
“The idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, All centuries but this, and every country but his own.”
VerifiedThe Mikado (1885) · evidenceDissatisfaction
“I love my fellow creatures -- I do all the good I can -- yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable man!”
VerifiedBartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919) · evidencePhilanthropists
“Down went the owners -- greedy men whom hope of gain allured: oh, dry the starting tear, for they were heavily insured.”
Disasters
“In enterprise of martial kind, when there was any fighting, he led his regiment from behind -- he found it less exciting.”
VerifiedThe Gondoliers (1889) · evidenceGenerals
“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.”
VerifiedThe Mikado (1885) · evidenceAncestry