Quote

If the jests that you crack have an orthodox smack, You may get a bland smile from these sages But should it, by chance, be imported from France, Half-a-crown is stopped out of your wages!

W. S. Gilbert

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W. S. Gilbert
Age: 74 †
Born: 1836
Born: November 18
Died: 1911
Died: May 29
Dramatist
Illustrator
Librettist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Theatrical Director
Writer
London
England
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert
William Schwenck Gilbert
William S. Gilbert
William Schwenk Gilbert
Bab
Bab Gilbert
William Gilbert
France
Crown
Smile
Crack
Chance
Sage
Half
Crowns
Jests
May
Wages
Imported
Cracks
Sages
Orthodox
Bland
Stopped
Smack

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I accept refreshment at any hands, however lowly.
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Let the punishment fit the crime.
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I see no objection to stoutness, in moderation.
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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.
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Oh! a private buffoon is a light-hearted loon, If you listen to popular rumour From morning to night he's so joyous and bright, And he bubbles with wit and good humour!
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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!
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I'm really very sorry for you all, but it's an unjust world, and virtue is triumphant only in theatrical performances.
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And that singular anomaly, the lady novelist-- I don't think she'd be missed--I'm sure she'd not be missed!
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I am a courtier grave and serious Who is about to kiss your hand: Try to combine a pose imperious With a demeanour nobly bland.
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Spurn not the nobly born with love affected nor treat with virtuous scorn the well connected.
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My object all sublime I shall achieve in time- To let the punishment fit the crime- The punishment fit the crime.
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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.
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If I can wheedle A knife or a needle, Why not a Silver Churn?
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Society has quite forsaken all her wicked courses, Which empties our police courts, and abolishes divorces.
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Wherever valor true is found, true modesty will there abound.
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Who knows but we may count among our intellectual chickens Like them an Earl of Thackeray and p'raps a Duke of Dickens
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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.
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If your master is surly, from getting up early (And tempers are short in the morning), An inopportune joke is enough to provoke Him to give you, at once, a month's warning.
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I am the very model of a modern major general
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