W.S. Gilbert Quotes

Against a dark sky, all flowers look like fireworks.

God is like the sun; you cannot look at it, but without it you cannot look at anything else.

Tolerance is the virtue of people who do not believe in anything.

Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.

I don't need a church to tell me I'm wrong where I already know I'm wrong; I need a Church to tell me I'm wrong where I think I'm right

The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.

A really great person is the person who makes every person feel great.

When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?

It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.

A true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.

But the truth is that it is only by believing in God that we can ever criticise the Government. Once abolish the God, and the Government becomes the God.

God gives every bird its food, but He does not throw it into its nest.

Large organization is loose organization. Nay, it would be almost as true to say that organization is always disorganization.

I've never seen any life transformation that didn't begin with the person in question finally getting tired of their own bullshit.

People are drastically overconfident about their judgments of others.

Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.

When belief in God becomes difficult, the tendency is to turn away from Him; but in heaven's name to what?

Love, unrequited, robs me of my rest: Love, hopeless love, my ardent soul encumbers: Love, nightmare-like, lies heavy on my chest, And weaves itself into my midnight slumbers!

Tis' better to live your own life imperfectly than to imitate someone else's perfectly.

Stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be.

I've searched all the parks in all the cities - and found no statues of Committees.

And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.

If men will not be governed by the Ten Commandments, they shall be governed by the ten thousand commandments

Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.

I'm choosing happiness over suffering, I know I am. I'm making space for the unknown future to fill up my life with yet-to-come surprises.

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

Fairy tales are more than true.

Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.

We are all in the same boat, in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.

The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.

Faith means believing the unbelievable.

Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.

We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press... It is not we who silence the press. It is the press who silences us.

You cannot love a thing without wanting to fight for it.

A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.

If there were no God, there would be no atheists.

When everyone is somebody, then no one's anybody.

The problem of disbelieving in God is not that a man ends up believing nothing. Alas, it is much worse. He ends up believing anything.

All my authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

A dead thing goes with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.

I liked you because you could make me smile. I fell in love with you because you made me want to be a better person. Now that you're leaving me, what am I supposed to do?

This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.

There's always another level up. There's always another ascension. More grace, more light, more generosity, more compassion, more to shed, more to grow.

You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight.

We need society, and we need solitude also, as we need summer and winter, day and night, exercise and rest.

Let a man walk ten miles steadily on a hot summer's day along a dusty English road, and he will soon discover why beer was invented.

A great deal of contemporary criticism reads to me like a man saying, 'Of course I do not like green cheese. I am very fond of brown sherry.

I therefore take the liberty of proposing for this hypothetical new atom, which is not light but plays an essential part in every process of radiation, the name photon.