W.S. Gilbert Quotes

The interaction of the variation in our genes is what's responsible for lots of our attributes and vigor.

humor can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle

See how the Fates their gifts allot, For A is happy-B is not. Yet B is worthy, I dare say, Of more prosperity than A.

If I can wheedle A knife or a needle, Why not a Silver Churn?

When a felon s not engaged in his employment, Or maturing his felonious little plans, His capacity for innocent enjoyment Is just as great as any honest mans.

Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You really need to be certain it's what you want before you commit.

poverty is obsolete and hunger is abolished

I believe in preaching to the converted; for I have generally found that the converted do not understand their own religion.

Is life a boon? If so, it must befall That Death, whene'er he call, Must call too soon.

You know the old adage: Plant an expectation, reap a disappointment.

Om Namah Shivaya, meaning, I honor the divinity that resides within me.

God wants us to be in joy, God wants us to be happy.

The art of reading is to skip judiciously. Whole libraries may be skipped in these days, when we have the results of them in our modern culture without going over the ground again.

I never wanted to be the person that waited for a stranger to come to town - I wanted to be the stranger!

How could I pretend to be someone else when I was already failing at being the person I already was?

[Italian men] are like show poodles. Sometimes they look so good I want to applaud.

We're already separated that's official but there's still a window of hope left open that perhaps someday we could give things another try.

Don't like small talk, love rainy days.

Memory is man's greatest friend and worst enemy.

Sometimes Aristotle analyses his terms, but very often he takes them for granted; and in the latter case, I think, he is sometimes deceived by them.

Your home is whatever in this world you love more than you love yourself.

It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense.

A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon.

Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.

And it did for one wild moment cross my mind that, perhaps, those might not be the very best judges of the relation of religion to happiness who, by their own account, had neither one nor the other.

Mr. McCabe thinks that I am not serious but only funny, because Mr. McCabe thinks that funny is the opposite of serious. Funny is the opposite of not funny and nothing else.

The modern world is a crowd of very rapid racing cars all brought to a standstill and stuck in a block of traffic.

A madman is not someone who has lost his reason but someone who has lost everything but his reason

In a world flagrant with the failures of civilization, what is there particularly immortal about our own?

I never could see anything wrong in sensationalism; and I am sure our society is suffering more from secrecy than from flamboyant revelations.

Odd, isn't it, that a thief and a vagabond should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and frivolous, and without fruit for God or man?

Self-denial is the test and definition of self-government.

Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground.

You know what my theory is? Accept me or go to hell.

Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit.

Here ends another day, during which I have had eyes, ears, hands and the great world around me. Tomorrow begins another day. Why am I allowed two?

What do Japanese Jews love to eat? Hebrew National Tsunami.

Only friendliness produces friendship. And we must look far deeper into the soul of man for the thing that produces friendliness.

In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was logic.

Pride juggles with her toppling towers, They strike the sun and cease, But the firm feet of humility They grip the ground like trees.

There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

The greatest political storm flutters only a fringe of humanity. But an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children literally alter the destiny of nations.

You have not wasted your time; you have helped to save the world. We are not buffoons, but very desperate men at war with a vast conspiracy.

What affects men sharply about a foreign nation is not so much finding or not finding familiar things; it is rather not finding them in the familiar place.

And they that rule in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they have no graves as yet.

When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.

Every time something pops in my head, I think twice about it and I do it anyway.

Poetry is halfway between prose and music: it is sometimes like an intimate conversation, in words and phrases which need not be fully uttered, and sometimes like dancing and wordless music.