Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Illustrated) Quotes

“LADY TEAZLE. Sir Peter — Sir Peter you — may scold or smile, according to your Humour[,] but I ought to have my own way in everything, and what’s more I will too — what! tho’ I was educated in the country I know very well that women of Fashion in London are accountable to nobody after they are married. SIR PETER. Very well! ma’am very well! so a husband is to have no influence, no authority? LADY TEAZLE. Authority! no, to be sure — if you wanted authority over me, you should have adopted me and not married me[:] I am sure you were old enough.”
― Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Illustrated)

“LADY TEAZLE. O to be sure she has herself the oddest countenance that ever was seen— ’tis a collection of Features from all the different Countries of the globe. SIR BENJAMIN. So she has indeed — an Irish Front —— CRABTREE. Caledonian Locks —— SIR BENJAMIN. Dutch Nose —— CRABTREE. Austrian Lips —— SIR BENJAMIN. Complexion of a Spaniard —— CRABTREE. And Teeth a la Chinoise —— SIR BENJAMIN. In short, her Face resembles a table d’hote at Spa — where no two guests are of a nation —— CRABTREE. Or a Congress at the close of a general War — wherein all the members even to her eyes appear to have a different interest and her Nose and Chin are the only Parties likely to join issue.”
― Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Illustrated)

“PETER. Egad — and so we must — that’s impossible. Ah! Master Rowley when an old Batchelor marries a young wife — He deserves — no the crime carries the Punishment along with it.”
― Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Illustrated)

“MARIA. Well I’ll not debate how far Scandal may be allowable — but in a man I am sure it is always contemtable. — We have Pride, envy, Rivalship, and a Thousand motives to depreciate each other — but the male-slanderer must have the cowardice of a woman before He can traduce one.”
― Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Illustrated)

“MARIA. For my Part — I own madam — wit loses its respect with me, when I see it in company with malice. —”
― Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Illustrated)

“Rosy. He says he’ll undertake to cure you for three thousand pounds. Mrs. Bri. Three thousand pounds! three thousand halters! — No, lovee, you shall never submit to such impositions; die at once, and be a customer to none of them. Just. I won’t die, Bridget — I don’t like death.”
― Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Illustrated)

“Rosy. Efacks, I can do nothing, but there’s the German quack, whom you wanted to send from town; I met him at the next door, and I know he has antidotes for all poisons. Just. Fetch him, my dear friend, fetch him! I’ll get him a diploma if he cures me.”
― Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Illustrated)

“Lauretta! ay, you would have her called so; but for my part I never knew any good come of giving girls these heathen Christian names: if you had called her Deborrah, or Tabitha, or Ruth, or Rebecca, or Joan, nothing of this had ever happened; but I always knew Lauretta was a runaway name.”
― Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Illustrated)

“Rosy. Indeed! Good lack, good lack, to think of the instability of human affairs! Nothing certain in this world — most deceived when most confident — fools of fortune all.”
― Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Illustrated)

“Trounce. Come, silence your drum — there is no valour stirring to-day. I thought St. Patrick would have given us a recruit or two to- day. Sol. Mark, serjeant! Enter two COUNTRYMEN. Trounce. Oh! these are the lads I was looking for; they have the look of gentlemen. — An’t you single, my lads? 1 Coun. Yes, an please you, I be quite single: my relations be all dead, thank heavens, more or less. I have but one poor mother left in the world, and she’s an helpless woman.”
― Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Illustrated)

“Enter LIEUTENANT O’CONNOR, disguised. Just. So, a tall — Efacks! what! has lost an eye? Rosy. Only a bruise he got in taking seven or eight highwaymen.”
― Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Illustrated)

“Just. There they go, ding dong in for the day. Good lack! a fluent tongue is the only thing a mother don’t like her daughter to resemble her in.”
― Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Illustrated)

“Just. Why, zounds! will you hear me or no?”
― Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Illustrated)

“SIR BENJAMIN. Perhaps, Sir, you are not a Doctor. SIR OLIVER. Truly Sir I am to thank you for my degree If I am.”
― Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Illustrated)

“CHARLES. And there are two brothers of his, William and Walter Blunt, Esquires, both members of Parliament, and noted speakers; and, what’s very extraordinary, I believe, this is the first time they were ever bought or sold. SIR OLIVER. That is very extraordinary, indeed! I’ll take them at your own price, for the honour of Parliament.”
― Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Illustrated)

“LADY TEAZLE. And I am sure I was a Fooll to marry you — an old dangling Batchelor, who was single of [at] fifty — only because He never could meet with any one who would have him. SIR PETER. Aye — aye — Madam — but you were pleased enough to listen to me — you never had such an offer before — LADY TEAZLE. No — didn’t I refuse Sir Jeremy Terrier — who everybody said would have been a better Match — for his estate is just as good as yours — and he has broke his Neck since we have been married!”
― Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Illustrated)

“SIR OLIVER. Odds my Life — I am not sorry that He has run out of the course a little — for my Part, I hate to see dry Prudence clinging to the green juices of youth— ’tis like ivy round a sapling and spoils the growth of the Tree.”
― Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Illustrated)

“SIR OLIVER. Egad so He does — mercy on me — He’s greatly altered — and seems to have a settled married look — one may read Husband in his Face at this Distance.”
― Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Illustrated)

“SIR OLIVER. Aye — I know — there are a set of malicious prating prudent Gossips both male and Female, who murder characters to kill time, and will rob a young Fellow of his good name before He has years to know the value of it.”
― Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Illustrated)

“SURFACE. The license of invention some people take is monstrous indeed. MARIA. ’Tis so but in my opinion, those who report such things are equally culpable.”
― Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Illustrated)

“LADY SNEERWELL. I’m not disappointed in Snake, I never suspected the fellow to have virtue enough to be faithful even to his own Villany.”
― Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Illustrated)

“LADY SNEERWELL. Why truly Mrs. Clackit has a very pretty Talent — a great deal of industry — yet — yes — been tolerably successful in her way — To my knowledge she has been the cause of breaking off six matches[,] of three sons being disinherited and four Daughters being turned out of Doors. Of three several Elopements, as many close confinements — nine separate maintenances and two Divorces. — nay I have more than once traced her causing a Tete-a-Tete in the Town and Country Magazine — when the Parties perhaps had never seen each other’s Faces before in the course of their Lives. VERJUICE. She certainly has Talents.”
― Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Illustrated)

“Graced by those signs which truth delights to own, The timid blush, and mild submitted tone: Whate’er she says, though sense appear throughout, Displays the tender hue of female doubt; Deck’d with that charm, how lovely wit appears,”
― Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Illustrated)

“Hard is the task to shape that beauty’s praise, Whose judgment scorns the homage flattery pays! But praising Amoret we cannot err, No tongue o’ervalues Heaven, or flatters her! Yet she, by Fate’s perverseness — she alone Would doubt our truth, nor deem such praise her own! Adorning Fashion, unadorn’d by dress, Simple from taste, and not from carelessness; Discreet in gesture, in deportment mild, Not stiff with prudence, nor uncouthly wild: No state has AMORET! no studied mien; She frowns no GODDESS, and she moves no QUEEN. The softer charm that in her manner lies Is framed to captivate, yet not surprise; It justly suits th’ expression of her face, — ’Tis less than dignity, and more than grace! On her pure cheek the native hue is such, That, form’d by Heav’n to be admired so much, The hand divine, with a less partial care, Might well have fix’d a fainter crimson there, And bade the gentle inmate of her breast, — Inshrined Modesty! — supply the rest.”
― Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Illustrated)

“Since, however, Sheridan’s biographers, from Moore to Fraser Rae, have shown that no authorised or correct edition of THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL was published in Sheridan’s lifetime, there seems unusual justification for reproducing the text of the play itself with absolute fidelity to the original manuscript”
― Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Illustrated)

“As I have endeavoured to reproduce the works of Sheridan as he wrote them, I may be told that he was a bad hand at punctuating and very bad at spelling. . . . But Sheridan’s shortcomings as a speller have been exaggerated.” Lest “Sheridan’s shortcomings” either in spelling or in punctuation should obscure the text, I have, in this edition, inserted in brackets some explanatory suggestions.”
― Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Illustrated)

“First staged at the Drury Lane Theatre on 8 May 1777, The School for Scandal received an enthusiastic welcome from audiences, though it only initially ran for twenty performances in its first season. However, it returned the following season for more than forty performances and by the end of the eighteenth century it had been staged more than two hundred times. The play was well received by critics, as they celebrated the wit and morals of the work. The essayist and critic, William Hazlitt, was effusive in his praise, describing it ‘the most finished and faultless comedy we have’ and stating that, ‘It professes a faith in the natural goodness as well as habitual depravity of human nature’. Similarly impressed was the late nineteenth century poet and critic, Edmund Gosse, who commented in A History of Eighteenth Century Literature that it was ‘perhaps the best existing English comedy of intrigue’.”
― Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Illustrated)