Richard Brinsley Sheridan

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 Right Honourable gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his facts.

Won’t you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.

You write with ease, to show your breeding,

A man may surely be allowed to take a glass of wine by his own fireside.

Here’s to the maiden of bashful fifteen

An unforgiving eye, and a damned disinheriting countenance!

Here is the whole set! a character dead at every word.

You shall see them on a beautiful quarto page where a neat rivulet of text shall meander through a meadow of margin.

If I reprehend any thing in this world, it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice derangement of epitaphs!

She’s as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile.

Madam, a circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge.

He is the very pineapple of politeness!

Illiterate him, I say, quite from your memory.

You write with ease to show your breeding, But easy writing’s curst hard reading.

Here’s to the maiden of bashful fifteen; Here’s to the widow of fifty; Here’s to the flaunting, extravagant quean, And here’s to the housewife that’s thrifty. I’ll warrant she’ll prove an excuse for the glass.

Through all the drama—whether damned or not— Love gilds the scene, and women guide the plot.