W.S. Gilbert Quotes

The Law is the true embodiment of everything that's excellent; it has no kind of fault or flaw and I, my Lords, embody the Law.

The more we are certain what good is, the more we shall see good in everything.

The privilege and pleasure That we treasure beyond measure Is to run on little errands for the Ministers of State.

Meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain. Meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure.

A Catholic is a person who has plucked up courage to face the incredible and inconceivable idea that something else may be wiser than he is.

He meant that when people laugh together, they cease to be young and old, master and pupils, jailer and prisoners. They become a single group of human beings enjoying its existence.

Boyhood is a most complex and incomprehensible thing. Even when one has been through it, one does not understand what it was. A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been the boy.

The man who kills a man kills a man. The man who kills himself kills all men. As far as he is concerned, he wipes out the world.

When you watch Robin Williams, you can see a lot of Jonathan Winters. Robin is the first one to admit that; he worshiped Jonathan Winters.

But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilling yearnings.

you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead.

I would show up at a party for Al Qaeda if you said there's going to be a dinner.

I just don't accept midgets as human beings. There's only so much political correctness I can accept.

Few of the great works of ancient Greek literature are easy reading.

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.

Thrift is poetic because it is creative; waste is unpoetic because it is waste.

That’s the thing about a human life-there’s no control group, no way to ever know how any of us would have turned out if any variables had been changed.

Zen masters say you cannot see your reflection in running water, only in still water.

God dwells within you, as you.

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.

Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.

The eagle has no liberty; he only has loneliness.

All government is an ugly necessity.

Every time I give a straight answer and read it in a magazine, I say, 'Ouch.' One day I'd like to talk to a psychoanalyst about why celebrities reveal so much of themselves in interviews.

The difficulty of explaining ‘why I am a Catholic’ is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true.

The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.

Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

Never be afraid of What is good; the good is always the road to what is true.

The things we see every day are the things we never see at all.

Bhuta ia, dewa ia. (Bali expression meaning Man is a demon, man is a god.)

So now I have started living my own life. Imperfect and clumsy as it may look, it is resembling me now, thoroughly.

Every man should have laws of his own, I should think; commandments of his own, for every man has a different set of circumstances wherein to work - or worry.

Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalised.

The relation between parents and children is essentially based on teaching.

Maybe the difference between first marriage and second marriage is that the second time at least you know you are gambling.

Think of all those ages through which men have had the courage to die, and then remember that we have actually fallen to talking about having the courage to live.

Culture is like wealth; it makes us more ourselves, it enables us to express ourselves

This was my moment to look for the kind of healing and peace that can only come from solitude.

Moral issues are always terribly complex for someone without principles.

To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced life.

In all secrets there is a kind of guilt, however beautiful or joyful they may be, or for what good end they may be set to serve. Secrecy means evasion, and evasion means a problem to the moral mind.

Every shot that kills ricochets.

The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of something he cannot understand.

You have no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself and how little I deserve it.

The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind.

In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it.

Guilt's just your ego's way of tricking you into thinking that you're making moral progress. Don't fall for it, my dear.

Dear Lord, please show me everything I need to understand about forgiveness and surrender

It's easier to change what you do than people think it is. If you don't change, your field changes around you.

WAKING AT NIGHT The blue river is grey at morning and evening. There is twilight at dawn and dusk. I lie in the dark wondering if this quiet in me now is a beginning or an end.