W. S. Gilbert
W. S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbertwas an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for the fourteen comic operasproduced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan. The most famous of these include H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and one of the most frequently performed works in the history of musical theatre, The Mikado. These, as well as several of the other Savoy operas, continue to be frequently performed in the English-speaking world and beyond by opera companies, repertory companies,...
pride helping my-family
My family pride is something inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering.
philosophical discovery secret
In the discovery of secret things and in the investigation of hidden causes, stronger reasons are obtained from sure experiments and demonstrated arguments than from probable conjectures and the opinions of philosophical speculators of the common sort.
matter tables chairs
It isn't so much what's on the table that matters, as what's on the chairs.
party thinking voting
I always voted at my party's call, and I never thought of thinking for myself at all.
fascination ruins frantic
There's a fascination frantic in a ruin that's romantic.
mistake moon shy
Ah, pray no mistake, We are not shy; We're very wide awake The Moon and I.
facts ancestry descent
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.
modern minerals calculus
I am the very model of a modern major general
wind half dozen
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.
country tone idiot
The idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, All centuries but this, and every country but his own.
women race woe
In all the woes that curse our race there is a lady in the case.
born treats virtuous
Spurn not the nobly born with love affected; nor treat with virtuous scorn the well connected.
math animal vegetables
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.
cutting loss village
When the enterprising burglar isn't burgling; When the cut-throat isn't occupied in crime; He loves to hear the little brook a-gurgling; And listen to the merry village chime.