Richard Brinsley Sheridan Quotes

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

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

First staged at the Drury Lane Theatre on 8 May 1777, The School for Scandal received an enthusiastic welcome from audiences, though it only initially ran for twenty performances in its first season. However, it returned the following season for more than forty performances and by the end of the eighteenth century it had been staged more than two hundred times. The play was well received by critics, as they celebrated the wit and morals of the work. The essayist and critic, William Hazlitt, was effusive in his praise, describing it ‘the most finished and faultless comedy we have’ and stating that, ‘It professes a faith in the natural goodness as well as habitual depravity of human nature’. Similarly impressed was the late nineteenth century poet and critic, Edmund Gosse, who commented in A History of Eighteenth Century Literature that it was ‘perhaps the best existing English comedy of intrigue’.

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

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

She’s as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile.

Rosy. Indeed! Good lack, good lack, to think of the instability of human affairs! Nothing certain in this world — most deceived when most confident — fools of fortune all.

The Spanish fleet thou canst not see, because—it is not yet in sight!

The heart that is conscious of its own integrity is ever slow to credit another´s treachery.

Rosy. Efacks, I can do nothing, but there’s the German quack, whom you wanted to send from town; I met him at the next door, and I know he has antidotes for all poisons. Just. Fetch him, my dear friend, fetch him! I’ll get him a diploma if he cures me.

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

Just. Why, zounds! will you hear me or no?

I wish sir, you would practise this without me. I can’t stay dying here all night. O Lord, Sir—when a heroine goes mad she always goes into white satin.

I ne'er could any luster see In eyes that would not look on me.

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.