Quotes from Richard Brinsley Sheridan


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


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!


Ay, ay, the best terms will grow obsolete: damns have had their day.


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.


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.


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


Pity those who nature abuses; never those who abuse nature.


I'm called away by particular business - but I leave my character behind me.


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


Do thou snatch treasures from my lips, and I'll take kingdoms back from thine.


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


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


A bumper of good liquor will end a contest quicker than justice, judge, or vicar.


Those that vow the most are the least sincere.


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.


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


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


That old man dies prematurely whose memory records no benefits conferred. They only have lived long who have lived virtuously.


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


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