Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (October 30, 1751 - July 7, 1816) was an Irish playwright and Whig statesman.

Sourced

• An apothecary should never be out of spirits.
  • St. Patrick's Day (1775), Act I, sc. i.

• Death's a debt; his mandamus binds all alike — no bail, no demurrer.
  • St. Patrick's Day (1775), Act II, sc. iv.

• Date not the life which thou hast run by the mean of reckoning of the hours and days, which though hast breathed: a life spent worthily should be measured by a nobler line, — by deeds, not years...
  • Pizarro (first acted 24 May 1799), Act iv, Scene 1. Compare: "Who well lives, long lives; for this age of ours / Should not be numbered by years, daies, and hours", Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, Second Week, Fourth Day, Book ii.

• You write with ease to show your breeding,
  But easy writing's curst hard reading.
  • Clio's Protest (1819).

• An oyster may be crossed in love.
  • Clio's Protest (1819).

• The right honorable gentlemen is indebted to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his facts.
  • Sheridaniana, Speech in Reply to Mr. Dundas.

• Believe not each accusing tongue,
  As most weak persons do;
  But still believe that story wrong,
  Which ought not to be true!
  • Reported in Nicholas Harris Nicolas, The Carcanet: a Literary Album, Containing Select Passages from the Most Distinguished English Writers (1828), p. 132.

The Rivals (1775)

• 'Tis safest in matrimony to begin with a little aversion.
  • Act I, sc. ii

• A progeny of learning.
  • Act I, sc. i

• Never say more than is necessary.
  • Act II, sc. i

• I know you are laughing in your sleeve.
  • Act II, sc. i

• He is the very pineapple of politeness!
  • Act III, sc. iii

• If I reprehend anything in this world, it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice derangement of epitaphs!
  • Act III, sc. iii

• As headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile.
  • Act III, sc. iii

• Our ancestors are very good kind of folks; but they are the last people I should choose to have a visiting acquaintance with.
  • Act IV, sc. i

• No caparisons, miss, if you please. Caparisons don't become a young woman.
  • Act IV, sc. ii

• You are not like Cerberus, three gentlemen at once, are you?
  • Act IV, sc. ii

• The quarrel is a very pretty quarrel as it stands; we should only spoil it by trying to explain it.
  • Act IV, sc. iii

• My valor is certainly going! — it is sneaking off! I feel it oozing out, as it were, at the palm of my hands!
  • Act V, sc. iii

• I own the soft impeachment.
  • Act V, sc. iii

• Through all the drama — whether damned or not —
  Love gilds the scene, and women guide the plot.
  • Epilogue

The Duenna (1775)

• I ne'er could any luster see
  In eyes that would not look on me.
  • Act I, sc. ii

• I loved him for himself alone.
  • Act I, sc. iii

• A bumper of good liquor
  Will end a contest quicker
  Than justice, judge, or vicar.
  • Act I, sc. iii

• Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics.
  • Act I, sc. iv

The School for Scandal (1777)

• Tale-bearers are as bad as the tale-makers.
  • Act I, sc. i

• You shall see them on a beautiful quarto page, where a neat rivulet of text shall meander through a meadow of margin.
  • Act I, sc. i

• You had no taste when you married me.
  • Act I, sc. ii

• Here's to the maiden of bashful fifteen;
  Here's to the widow of fifty;
  Here's to the flaunting, extravegant quean,
  And here's to the housewife that's thrifty.
  Let the toast pass —
  Drink to the lass;
  I'll warrant she'll prove an excuse for the glass.
  • Act III, sc. iii

• An unforgiving eye, and a damned disinheriting countenance.
  • Act IV, sc. i

• Be just before you're generous.
  • Act IV, sc. i

The Critic (1779)

• There is not a passion so strongly rooted in the human heart as envy.
  • Act I, sc. i

• The newspapers! Sir, they are the most villainous — licentious — abominable — infernal — Not that I ever read them — no — I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper.
  • Act I, sc. i

• Egad, I think the interpreter is the hardest to be understood of the two!
  • Act I, sc. ii

• A practitioner in panegyric, or, to speak more plainly, a professor of the art of puffing.
  • Act I, sc. ii

• The number of those who undergo the fatigue of judging for themselves is very small indeed.
  • Act I, sc. ii

• Certainly nothing is unnatural that is not physically impossible.
  • Act II, sc. i

• I wish, sir, you would practice this without me. I can't stay dying here all night.
  • Act III, sc. i