Quotes from Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Those that vow the most are the least sincere.

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.

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!

Never say more than is necessary.

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

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

When of a gossiping circle it was asked, What are they doing? The answer was, Swapping lies.

Certainly nothing is unnatural that is not physically impossible.

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

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.

To pity, without the power to relieve, is still more painful than to ask and be denied.

Had I a thousand daughters, by Heaven! I'd as soon have them taught the black art as their alphabet!

The heart that is conscious of its own integrity is ever slow to credit another´s treachery.

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

My hair has been in training some time.

If to raise malicious smiles at the infirmities or misfortunes of those who have never injured us be the province of wit or humour, Heaven grant me a double portion of dullness.

tis an old observation, and a very true one; but what's to be done, as I said before? how will you prevent people from talking?...

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

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

There's no possibility of being witty without a little ill-nature.

PETER. Egad — and so we must — that's impossible. Ah! Master Rowley when an old Batchelor marries a young wife — He deserves — no the crime carries the Punishment along with it.

Alas! the devil's sooner raised than laid.

MARIA. Well I'll not debate how far Scandal may be allowable — but in a man I am sure it is always contemtable. — We have Pride, envy, Rivalship, and a Thousand motives to depreciate each other — but the male-slanderer must have the cowardice of a woman before He can traduce one.

I am compliance itself—when I am not thwarted;—no one more easily led—when I have my own way.