Top 100 Richard Brinsley Sheridan Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 2 of 3

51. “MARIA. For my Part – I own madam – wit loses its respect with me, when I see it in company with malice. –.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

52. “You write with ease, to show your breeding, But easy writing’s vile hard reading.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

53. “I’m called away by particular business – but I leave my character behind me.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

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

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

55. “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.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

56. “The quarrel is a very pretty quarrel as it stands – we should only spoil it by trying to explain it.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

57. “There is no trusting appearances.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

58. “Women govern us; let us render them perfect: the more they are enlightened, so much the more shall we be. On the cultivation of the mind of women depends the wisdom of men. It is by women that nature writes on the hearts of men.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

59. “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.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

60. “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

61. “The Right Honourable gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his facts.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

62. “Wit loses its point when dipped in malice.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

63. “Pity those who nature abuses; never those who abuse nature.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

64. “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

65. “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

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

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

67. “Humanity always becomes a conqueror.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

68. “Easy writings curse is hard reading.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

69. “Soft pity never leaves the gentle breast where love has been received a welcome guest.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

70. “I’ll make my old clothes know who’s master. I shall straightaway cashier the hunting-frock, and render my leather breeches incapable. My hair has been in training some time.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

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

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

72. “O Lord, Sir – when a heroine goes mad she always goes into white satin.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

73. “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

74. “Egad, I think the interpreter is the hardest to be understood of the two!”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

75. “Sheer necessity,-the proper parent of an art so nearly allied to invention.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

76. “Certainly nothing is unnatural that is not physically impossible.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

77. “There ’s nothing like being used to a thing.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

78. “A fluent tongue is the only thing a mother don’t like her daughter to resemble her in.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

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

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

80. “Alas! the devil’s sooner raised than laid.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

81. “Prudence, like experience, must be paid for.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

82. “Give them a corrupt House of Lords, give them a venal House of Commons, give they a tyrannical Prince, give them a truckling court, and let me have but an unfettered press. I will defy them to encroach a hair’s breadth upon the liberties of England.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

83. “There’s no possibility of being witty without a little ill-nature.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

84. “Believe that story false that ought not to be true.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

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

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

86. “Nothing keeps me in such awe as perfect beauty; now, there is something consoling and encouraging in ugliness.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

87. “For in religion as in friendship, they who profess most are ever the least sincere.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

88. “The most threatened group in human societies as in animal societies is the unmated male: the unmated male is more likely to wind up in prison or in an asylum or dead than his mated counterpart. He is less likely to be promoted at work and he is considered a poor credit risk.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

89. “The throne we honour is the people’s choice.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

90. “Death’s a debt; his mandamus binds all alike- no bail, no demurrer.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

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

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

92. “There needs no small degree of address to gain the reputation of benevolence without incurring the expense.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

93. “Those that vow the most are the least sincere.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

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

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

95. “No scandal about Queen Elizabeth, I hope?”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

96. “It is by women that nature writes on the hearts of men.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

97. “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

98. “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

99. “They only have lived long who have lived virtuously.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

100. “Men seldom think deeply on subjects in which they have no choice of opinion: they are fearful of encountering obstacles to their faith – as in religion – and so are content with the surface.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan