1836-1911, British Librettist
Darwinian man, though well-behaved, at best is only a monkey shaved.
W. S. Gilbert – [Evolution]
Down went the owners — greedy men whom hope of gain allured: oh, dry the starting tear, for they were heavily insured.
W. S. Gilbert – [Disasters]
I always voted at my party's call, and I never thought of thinking for myself at all.
W. S. Gilbert – [Elections]
I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule.
W. S. Gilbert – [Ancestry]
I love my fellow creatures — I do all the good I can — yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable man!
W. S. Gilbert – [Philanthropists]
In enterprise of martial kind, when there was any fighting, he led his regiment from behind — he found it less exciting.
W. S. Gilbert – [Generals]
It isn't so much what's on the table that matters, as what's on the chairs.
W. S. Gilbert – [Food and Eating]
Matrimonial devotion doesn't seem to suit her notion.
W. S. Gilbert – [Fidelity]
My family pride is something inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering.
W. S. Gilbert – [Pride]
No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have; and I think he's a dirty little beast.
W. S. Gilbert – [Opinions]
The idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, All centuries but this, and every country but his own.
W. S. Gilbert – [Dissatisfaction]
Things are seldom what they seem.
W. S. Gilbert – [Appearance]
You have no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself; and how little I deserve it.
W. S. Gilbert – [Inferiority]