Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751 – 1816)
Irish playwright and Whig statesman.
I leave my character behind me.
As there are three of us come on purpose for the game, you won't be so cantankerous as to spoil the party by sitting out.
Be just before you're generous.
Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics.
I know you are laughing in your sleeve.
The right honorable gentlemen is indebted to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his facts.
Date not the life which thou hast run by the mean of reckoning of the hours and days, which though hast breathed: a life spent worthily should be measured by a nobler line, — by deeds, not years...
Steal! to be sure they may; and, egad, serve your best thoughts as gypsies do stolen children,—disfigure them to make 'em pass for their own.
Through all the drama — whether damned or not —
Love gilds the scene, and women guide the plot.
Our ancestors are very good kind of folks; but they are the last people I should choose to have a visiting acquaintance with.
There is not a passion so strongly rooted in the human heart as envy.
No caparisons, miss, if you please. Caparisons don't become a young woman.
Death's a debt; his mandamus binds all alike — no bail, no demurrer.
As headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile.
'Tis safest in matrimony to begin with a little aversion.
While his off-heel, insidiously aside,
Provokes the caper which he seems to chide.
The newspapers! Sir, they are the most villainous — licentious — abominable — infernal — Not that I ever read them — no — I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper.
The Spanish fleet thou canst not see, because—it is not yet in sight!
Believe not each accusing tongue,
As most weak persons do;
But still believe that story wrong,
Which ought not to be true!