Great Throughts Treasury

"Life is made up of interruptions."

"Spurn not the nobly-born with love affected, or treat with virtuous scorn the well-connected."

"Life is a joke that’s just begun."

"A pallid and thin young man, a haggard and lank young man, a greenery-yallery, Grosvenor Gallery, foot-in-the-grave young man!"

"A popular speaker, however unpopular and insignificant, has only to wind up his speech with half-a-dozen lines of Shakespeare (and to make it clearly understood that they are Shakespeare's) and he will sit down amid thunders of applause."

"Against our wills, papa?against our wills!"

"Ah, pray no mistake, We are not shy; We're very wide awake The Moon and I."

"Ah, take one consideration with another a policeman's lot is not a happy one!"

"An attachment … la Plato for a bashful young potato, or a not-too-French French bean!"

"Archibald: To understand this, it is not necessary to think of anything at all."

"Art stopped short at the cultivated court of the Empress Josephine."

"As innocent as a new-laid egg."

"As is gloriously sung in the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta "H.M.S. Pinafore," in the words of W. S. Gilbert: "Things are seldom as they seem, Skim milk masquerades as cream.""

"As someday it may happen that a victim must be found I've got a little list, I've got a little list of society offenders who might well be underground, and who never would be missed?who never would be missed!"

"Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock, from a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!"

"Bad language or abuse I never, never use, whatever the emergency; though "Bother it" I may occasionally say, I never use a big, big D-"

"But I submit, my lord, with all submission, to marry two at once is Burglaree!"

"But it's an unjust world, and virtue is triumphant only in theatrical performances."

"Darwinian Man, though well-behav?d, at best is only a monkey shav?d!"

"Down went the owners -- greedy men whom hope of gain allured: oh, dry the starting tear, for they were heavily insured."

"From such a face and form as mine, the noblest sentiments sound like the black utterances of a depraved imagination! It's human nature! I'm resigned."

"Great Britain is that monarchy sublime, to which some add (but others do not) Ireland."

"He did nothing in particular, and did it very well."

"He is an Englishman! For he himself has said it, and it's greatly to his credit, that he is an Englishman!.For he might have been a Rooshian a French or Turk or Proosian, or perhaps Itali-an. But in spite of all temptations to belong to other nations, he remains an Englishman."

"I always voted at my party's call, and I never thought of thinking for myself at all."

"I am the Captain of the Pinafore ; And a right good captain too! . . . . And I'm never, never sick at sea! What, never? No, never! What never? Hardly ever! He's hardly ever sick at sea! Then give three cheers, and one cheer more, For the hardy Captain of the Pinafore!"

"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."

"I can tell a woman's age in half a minute ? and I do!"

"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."

"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."

"I know what love is. There was a happy time when I didn't, but bitter experience has taught me."

"I love my fellow creatures -- I do all the good I can -- yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable man!"

"If you're anxious for to shine in the high aesthetic line As a man of culture rare, You must get up all the germs of the transcendental terms And plant them everywhere. You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases of your complicated state of mind, The meaning doesn't matter if it's only idle chatter Of a transcendental kind."

"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."

"I'm very good at integral and differential calculus, I know the scientific names of beings animalculous; In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral, I am the very model of a modern Major-General."

"If you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily in your medieval hand."

"I love my fellow-creatures, I do all the good I can, yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable man and I can't think why!"

"In enterprise of martial kind, when there was any fighting, he led his regiment from behind?He found it less exciting."

"It is my duty, and I will It was their duty, and they did."

"It isn't so much what's on the table that matters, as what's on the chairs."

"It's true I've got no shirts to wear, it's true my butcher's bill is due, it's true my prospects all look blue, but don't let that unsettle you! Never you mind! Roll on! (It roll on.)"

"Koko: But my position during the next month will be most unpleasant, most unpleasant! Nanki-Poo: Not nearly so unpleasant as mine at the end of it."

"Let us take it as it comes!"

"Life's a pudding full of plums; care's a canker that benumbs, wherefore waste our elocution on impossible solution? Life's a pleasant institution,"

"Man is nature's sole mistake."

"Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative."

"My family pride is something inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering."

"My object all sublime I shall achieve in time- To let the punishment fit the crime- The punishment fit the crime."

"No money, no grovel! ?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."

"No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have; and I think he's a dirty little beast."