W.S. Gilbert Quotes

...It's natural to believe in the supernatural. It never feels natural to accept only natural things.

Alas, we think of ourselves as unique entities-minds unlike any others-and thus we often reject the lessons that the emotional experience of others has to teach us.

Today exists between yesterday and tomorrow.

Being a success at work is not worth it if it means being a failure at home.

Well, I play Jews and parrots. Parrots are how I've branched out.

A tragedy means always a mans struggle with that which is stronger than man.

A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.

What a glorious garden of wonders the lights of Broadway would be to anyone lucky enough to be unable to read.

If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?

Tea, although an OrientalIs a gentleman at least;Cocoa is a cad and coward,Cocoa is a vulgar beast.

If the police ever try to pick me up, Michael Jackson told me I can hide out at his house.

The eye and brain are conspirators, and, like most conspiracies, theirs is negotiated behind closed doors, in the back room, outside of our awareness.

There are a great many good people, and a great many sane people here this afternoon. Unfortunately, by a kind of coincidence, all the good people are mad, and all the sane people are wicked.

But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet. Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.

Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves.

A detective story generally describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. A modern philosophic story generally describes six dead men discussing how any man can possibly be alive.

Unfortunately, I've never been mistaken as Johnny Depp.

With any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain healthy humiliation.

Beware of over-confidence; especially in matters of structure.

Wait and see whether the religion of the Servile State is not in every case what I say: the encouragement of small virtues supporting capitalism, the discouragement of the huge virtues that defy it.

And we were angry and poor and happy, And proud of seeing our names in print.

The danger of loss of faith in God is not that one will believe in nothing, but rather that one will believe in anything.

Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.

If they'd wanted a nice parrot, they wouldn't have asked for me.

The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

I'm used to explaining to people why my jokes were funny.

When people ask me why are you singing a drinking song if you don't drink anymore, because when I did drink I drank enough to sing drinking songs for the rest of my life!

Hell is God's great compliment to the reality of human freedom and the dignity of human choice.

A feminist is someone who loathes being a woman and who dislikes the chief feminine characteristics.

Why should ANYTHING go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?

The only defensible war is a war of defense.

Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.

No one can keep you down except yourself.

I always have something going on.

It's not enough to be sick and tired of something. You've got to be sick and tired of being sick and tired.

I lost all feeling a long time ago. Basketball is basketball. It doesn't matter what floor I'm on.

Original sin is the only doctrine that's been empirically validated by 2,000 years of human history.

The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.

People in high life are hardened to the wants and distresses of mankind as surgeons are to their bodily pains.

Powerful men who have powerful passions use much of their strength in forging chains for themselves.

Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich.

I like when somebody says something negative about me because I can put it back in their face

I have no intention of watching undersized Englishmen perched on horses with matchstick legs race along courses planned to amuse Nell Gwynn.

There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.

Poets do not go mad, but chess players do.

And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine, "I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine."

I've never been one of those who wanted to fill my calendar up 90 percent of the time.

If a man only likes victory he must always come late for the battle.

There is nothing harder to learn than painting and nothing which most people take less trouble about learning.

A true friend to me is someone that comes over for dinner, and hangs out with my daughter, someone I party with on a regular basis.