Best 80 quotes of W. S. Gilbert on MyQuotes

Oh, wouldn't the world seem dull and flat with nothing whatever to grumble at?

On my face extended flat I was walloped with a cat For listening at the key-hole of the door.

poverty is obsolete and hunger is abolished

Roll on, thou ball, roll on! Through pathless realms of Space, Roll on!

Saturday afternoon, although occurring at regular and well-foreseen intervals, always takes this railway by surprise.

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.

Society has quite forsaken all her wicked courses, Which empties our police courts, and abolishes divorces.

So I fell in love with a rich attorney's Elderly ugly daughter.

Spurn not the nobly born with love affected; nor treat with virtuous scorn the well connected.

Strike the concertina's melancholy string! Blow the spirit-stirring harp like any thing! Let the piano's martial blast Rouse the Echoes of the Past

The happiest hour a sailor sees Is when he's down At an inland town, With his Nancy on his knees, yo ho! And his arm around her waist!

The idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, All centuries but this, and every country but his own.

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.

Then a sentimental passion of a vegetable fashion must excite your languid spleen, An attachment a la Plato for a bashful young potato, or a not-too-French French bean!

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

There's fish in the sea, no doubt of it, As good as ever came out of it.

Things are seldom what they seem.

To sit in solemn silence on a dull, dark dock in a pestilential prison with a life-long lock awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock from a cheap and chippy chopper on a big, black block.

Utopia's quite another land; In her enterprising movements, She is England--with improvements

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.

When every blessed thing you have is made of silver, or of gold, you long for simple pewter.

When in that House MPs divide/If they've a brain and cerebellum, too/They've got to leave that brain outside/And vote just as their leaders tell 'em to.

When the enterprising burglar isn't burgling; When the cut-throat isn't occupied in crime; He loves to hear the little brook a-gurgling; And listen to the merry village chime.

When Wellington thrashed Bonaparte, As every child can tell, The House of Peers, throughout the war, Did nothing in particular, And did it very well

When you are lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is tabooed by anxiety, I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in without impropriety.

Wherever valor true is found, true modesty will there abound.

Who knows but we may count among our intellectual chickens Like them an Earl of Thackeray and p'raps a Duke of Dickens

You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases of complicated state of mind. The meaning doesn't matter if it's only idle chatter of a transcendental kind.

Crushed again!

Oh, dry the glistening tear that dues that marshal cheek Thy loving childern here in them thy comfort seek With sympathetic care their arms around the creep, For oh they can not bear to see their father weep