Richard Brinsley Sheridan Quotes

An oyster may be crossed in love!

Since, however, Sheridan’s biographers, from Moore to Fraser Rae, have shown that no authorised or correct edition of THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL was published in Sheridan’s lifetime, there seems unusual justification for reproducing the text of the play itself with absolute fidelity to the original manuscript

To pity, without the power to relieve, is still more painful than to ask and be denied.

Wit loses its respect with me, when I see it in company with malice.

No scandal about Queen Elizabeth, I hope?

"Are you ashamed of having done a right thing once in your life?"

"Ah: Sir — consider I live by the Badness of my Character! — I have nothing but my Infamy to depend on! — and, if it were once known that I had been betray'd into an honest Action, I should lose every Friend I have in the world."

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

I was struck all of a heap.

Trounce. Come, silence your drum — there is no valour stirring to-day. I thought St. Patrick would have given us a recruit or two to- day. Sol. Mark, serjeant! Enter two COUNTRYMEN. Trounce. Oh! these are the lads I was looking for; they have the look of gentlemen. — An’t you single, my lads? 1 Coun. Yes, an please you, I be quite single: my relations be all dead, thank heavens, more or less. I have but one poor mother left in the world, and she’s an helpless woman.

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

I’m called away by particular business—but I leave my character behind me.

The throne we honour is the people’s choice.

Rosy. He says he’ll undertake to cure you for three thousand pounds. Mrs. Bri. Three thousand pounds! three thousand halters! — No, lovee, you shall never submit to such impositions; die at once, and be a customer to none of them. Just. I won’t die, Bridget — I don’t like death.

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

There is no trusting appearances.