Quotes by Sir William Schwenck Gilbert

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 transendental kind.

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

On a tree by a river a little tom-tit Sang 'Willow, titwillow, titwillow!' And I said to him, 'Dicky-bird, why do you sit Singing 'Willow, titwillow, titwillow?' 'Is it a weakness of intellect, birdie? I cried, 'Or a rather tough worm in your little inside?' With a shake of his poor little head he replied, 'Oh, willow, titwillow, titwillow!'

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."

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

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

When I was a lad I served a term As office boy to an Attorney's firm. I cleaned the windows and I swept the floor, And I polished up the handle of the big front door. I polished up that handle so carefullee That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee! . . . . Stick close to your desks and never go to sea, And you all may be Rulers of the Queen's Navee!

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.

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

Oh, don't the days seem lank and long When all goes right and nothing goes wrong, And isn't your life extremely flat With nothing whatever to grumble at!