W. S. Gilbert

Then a sentimental passion of a vegetable fashion must excite your languid spleen, An attachment à la Plato for a bashful young potato, or a not-too-French French bean! Though the Philistines may jostle, you will rank as an apostle in the …

Art stopped short at the cultivated court of the Empress Josephine.

If you want a receipt for that popular mystery, Known to the world as a Heavy Dragoon - Take all the remarkable people in history, Rattle them off to a popular tune!

Yes, but you don't go!

Oh, dry the glistening tear That dews that martial cheek; Thy loving children hear, In them thy comfort seek. With sympathetic care Their arms around thee creep,

Exactly – you said "often" ('frequently') only once.

No, Frederic, it cannot be. I don’t think much of our profession, but, contrasted with respectability, it is comparatively honest.

When your process of extermination begins, let our deaths be as swift and painless as you can conveniently make them.

The last three ships we took proved to be manned entirely by orphans, and so we had to let them go. One would think that Great Britain’s mercantile navy was recruited solely from her orphan asylums – which we know is not the case.

In spite of all temptations To belong to other nations, He remains an Englishman!

When I was a lad I served a term As office boy to an attorney's firm. I cleaned the wndows and I swept the floor, And I polished up the handle of the big front door. I polished up that handle so carefullee That now I am the Ruler of the …

I am the monarch of the sea, The Ruler of the Queen's Navee, Whose praise Great Britain loudly chants And we are his sisters, and his cousins, and his aunts!

Now landsmen all, whoever you may be, If you want to rise to the top of the tree, If your soul isn't fettered to an office stool, Be careful to be guided by this golden rule— Stick close to your desks and never go to sea, And you all may …

Things are seldom what they seem; Skim milk masquerades as cream.

What, never? / No, never! / What, never? / Well, hardly ever!

From such a face and form as mine, the noblest sentiments sound like the black utterances of a depraved imagination! It's human nature! I'm resigned.

Or you or I must yield up his life to Ahrimanes. I would rather it were you.

Oh! my name is John Wellington Wells, I'm a dealer in magic and spells, In blessings and curses And ever-filled purses, In prophecies, witches, and knells. If you want a proud foe to "make tracks"—

But I submit, my lord, with all submission, To marry two at once is Burglaree!

She may very well pass for forty three In the dusk with the light behind her.

So I fell in love with a rich attorney's Elderly, ugly daughter.

A popular speaker, however unpopular and insignificant, has only to wind up his speech with half-a-dozen lines of Shakespeare (and to make it clearly understood that they are Shakespeare's) and he will sit down amid thunders of applause.