Quotes from Richard Brinsley Sheridan

An unforgiving eye, and a damned disinheriting countenance.

To smile at the jest which plants a thorn in another's breast is to become a principal in the mischief.

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

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

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

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

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

Here's to the maiden of bashful fifteen;Here's to the widow of fifty;Here's to the flaunting, extravagant 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.

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

Remember that when you meet your antagonist, to do everything in a mild agreeable manner. Let your courage be keen, but, at the same time, as polished as your sword.

Be just before you're generous.

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

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

I know you are laughing in your sleeve.

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!

Humanity is composed but of two categories, the invalids and the nurses.

Modesty is a quality in a lover more praised by the women than liked.

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

Take care; you know I am compliance itself, when I am not thwarted! No one more easily led, when I have my own way; but don't put me in a frenzy.

The Right Honourable Gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his facts.

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

There is nothing on earth so easy as to forget, if a person chooses to set about it. I'm sure I have as much forgot your poor, dear uncle, as if he had never existed; and I thought it my duty to do so.

There's no possibility of being witty without a little ill-nature -- the malice of a good thing is the barb that makes it stick.