Richard Brinsley Sheridan

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

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

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

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

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

Our ancestors are very good kind of folks; but they are the last people I should choose to have a visiting acquaintance with.

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

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

He is the very pineapple of politeness!

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

I know you are laughing in your sleeve.

Never say more than is necessary.

A progeny of learning.

Illiterate him, I say, quite from your memory.

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

Believe not each accusing tongue, As most weak persons do; But still believe that story wrong, Which ought not to be true!

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

An oyster may be crossed in love.

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

Take our constitution, wanting certainly as it did many reforms, yet, practically, it afforded the best security that human wisdom had ever given to man.

He stated it distinctly...as what he conceived was the unalterable resolution of ministers, that no proposal for peace should be entertained, while a single French soldier had a footing on British ground. [This sentiment was universally …

My visits to you may possibly be misunderstood by my friends; but I hope you know, Mr. Addington, that I have an unpurchasable mind.

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...

Such protection as vultures give to lambs.