W. S. Gilbert (1836 – 1911)
English dramatist and librettist best known for his operatic collaborations with the composer Arthur Sullivan.
I can tell a woman's age in half a minute -- and I do!
Or you or I must yield up his life to Ahrimanes. I would rather it were you.
Archibald: To understand this, it is not necessary to think of anything at all.
Saphir: Let us think of nothing at all!
A pallid and thin young man,
A haggard and lank young man,
A greenery-yallery, Grosvenor Gallery,
Foot-in-the-grave young man!
I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable. I can’t help it. I was born sneering.
In enterprise of martial kind,
When there was any fighting,
He led his regiment from behind—
He found it less exciting.
…in the first place, self decapitation is an extremely difficult, not to say dangerous, thing to attempt; and, in the second, it’s suicide, and suicide is a capital offence.
When everyone is somebody, then no one's anybody.
But I submit, my lord, with all submission,
To marry two at once is Burglaree!
I should have preferred to ride through the streets of Venice; but owing, I presume, to an unusually wet season,
the streets are in such a condition that equestrian exercise is impractical.
To sit in solemn silence in 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!
It's an unjust world, and virtue is triumphant only in theatrical productions.
Yes, I am the Apostle of Simplicity. I am called Archibald the All-Right, for I am infallible.
Against our wills, papa—against our wills!
I have a left shoulder-blade that is a miracle of loveliness. People come miles to see it. My right elbow has a fascination that few can resist.
Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.