Richard Brinsley Sheridan

An apothecary should never be out of spirits.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Death's a debt; his mandamus binds all alike — no bail, no demurrer.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

While his off-heel, insidiously aside,Provokes the caper which he seems to chide.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Such protection as vultures give to lambs.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

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...

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

You write with ease to show your breeding,But easy writing's curst hard reading.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

An oyster may be crossed in love.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

The right honorable gentlemen is indebted to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his facts.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

'Tis safest in matrimony to begin with a little aversion.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Illiterate him, I say, quite from your memory.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

A progeny of learning.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Never say more than is necessary.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

I know you are laughing in your sleeve.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

A circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

He is the very pineapple of politeness!

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

If I reprehend anything in this world, it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice derangement of epitaphs!

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

As headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Too civil by half.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

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

We will not anticipate the past; so mind, young people,—our retrospection will be all to the future.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

No caparisons, miss, if you please. Caparisons don't become a young woman.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

You are not like Cerberus, three gentlemen at once, are you?

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

The quarrel is a very pretty quarrel as it stands; we should only spoil it by trying to explain it.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

You're our enemy; lead the way, and we 'll precede.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

There's nothing like being used to a thing.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

As there are three of us come on purpose for the game, you won't be so cantankerous as to spoil the party by sitting out.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

My valour is certainly going! — it is sneaking off! I feel it oozing out, as it were, at the palm of my hands!

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

I own the soft impeachment.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

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

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

I ne'er could any luster seeIn eyes that would not look on me.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

I loved him for himself alone.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

A bumper of good liquorThan justice, judge, or vicar.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Had I a heart for falsehood framed,I ne'er could injure you.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Tale-bearers are as bad as the tale-makers.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

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

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

You had no taste when you married me.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Here is the whole set! a character dead at every word.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

I leave my character behind me.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Here's to the maiden of bashful fifteen;I'll warrant she'll prove an excuse for the glass.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

An unforgiving eye, and a damned disinheriting countenance.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

It was an amiable weakness.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Steal! to be sure they may; and, egad, serve your best thoughts as gypsies do stolen children,—disfigure them to make 'em pass for their own.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

There is not a passion so strongly rooted in the human heart as envy.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

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.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Sheer necessity,—the proper parent of an art so nearly allied to invention.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Egad, I think the interpreter is the hardest to be understood of the two!

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

A practitioner in panegyric, or, to speak more plainly, a professor of the art of puffing.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

The number of those who undergo the fatigue of judging for themselves is very small indeed.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

No scandal about Queen Elizabeth, I hope?

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Certainly nothing is unnatural that is not physically impossible.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Where they do agree on the stage, their unanimity is wonderful.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Inconsolable to the minuet in Ariadne.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

The Spanish fleet thou canst not see, because—it is not yet in sight!

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

An oyster may be crossed in love.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

I wish, sir, you would practice this without me. I can't stay dying here all night.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

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

The surest way to fail is not to determine to succeed.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

He is indebted to his memory for his jests and to his imagination for his facts.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Won't you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan