W. S. Gilbert

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.

— W. S. Gilbert

Things are seldom what they seem.

— W. S. Gilbert

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

— W. S. Gilbert

The idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, All centuries but this, and every country but his own.

— W. S. Gilbert

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

— W. S. Gilbert

Darwinian man, though well-behaved, at best is only a monkey shaved.

— W. S. Gilbert

Matrimonial devotion doesn't seem to suit her notion.

— W. S. Gilbert

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

— W. S. Gilbert

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

— W. S. Gilbert

You have no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself; and how little I deserve it.

— W. S. Gilbert

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

— W. S. Gilbert

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

— W. S. Gilbert

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

— W. S. Gilbert