William S. Gilbert quote: "For she is such a smart little craft, Such a neat little, sweet little craft-- Such a bright little, Tight little, Slight little, Light little, Trim little, slim little craft!"

Life is made up of interruptions.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

Then they began to sing That extremely lovely thing, "Scherzando! ma non troppo, ppp."
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

I always voted at my party's call, And I never thought of thinking of myself at all.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

If you wish in this world to advance your merits you're bound to enhance; you must stir it and stump...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

As innocent as a new-laid egg.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

Now landsmen all, whoever you may be, If you want to rise to the top of the tree, If your soul...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

Oh, I am a cook and a captain bold And the mate of the Nancy brig, And a bo'sun tight and a mi...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

Bad language or abuse I never, never use, Whatever the emergency; Though "Bother it" I m...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

Though "Bother it" I may Occasionally say, I never never use a big, big, D.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

Oh! to be wafted away From this black Aceldama of sorrow, Where the dust of an earthy to-day ...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

He is an Englishman! / For he himself has said it, / And it's greatly to his credit, / That he is an...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

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

I've got to take under my wing, / Tra la, / A most unattractive old thing, / Tra la, / With a carica...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

Take a pair of sparkling eyes.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

I'm a greenery-yallery, Grosvenor Gallery, / Foot-in-the-grave young man!
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pr...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

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

Hearts just as pure and fair / May beat in Belgrave Square / As in the lowly air / Of Seven Dials.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

He uses language that would make your hair curl.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

Down went the owners -- greedy men whom hope of gain allured: oh, dry the starting tear, for they we...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

But they couldn't chat together - they had not been introduced.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

I was a pale young curate then.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

He led his regiment from behind - / He found it less exciting.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

For you dream you are crossing the Channel, and tossing about in a steamer from Harwich, / Which is ...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

We will hang you, never fear, Most politely, most politely.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

The mildest curate going.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

Time was when Love and I were well acquainted.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

Matrimonial devotion doesn't seem to suit her notion.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

And I always voted at my party's call, / And I never thought of thinking for myself at all.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

Take my counsel, happy man; / Act upon it, if you can!
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

I'm called Little Buttercup - dear Little Buttercup, / Though I could never tell why.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

The constitutional guardian I, / Of pretty young Wards in Chancery.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

Something lingering with boiling oil in it . . . something humorous but lingering--with either boil...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

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

Things are seldom what they seem, Skim milk masquerades as cream.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

In enterprise of martial kind / When there was any fighting, / He led his reg'ment from behind / He ...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

Things are seldom what they seem.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

On a cloth untrue / With a twisted cue, / And elliptical billiard balls.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

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

Things are seldom what they seem, / Skim milk masquerades as cream.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

And I am right, And you are right, Modified rapture!
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

The House of Peers, throughout the war, / Did nothing in particular, / And did it very well.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

I am the very model of a modern Major-General; / I've information vegetable, animal and mineral; / I...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

When I first put this uniform on.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

A source of innocent merriment.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

She may very well pass for forty-three / In the dusk with a light behind her!
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

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

Sir, I view the proposal to hold an international exhibition at San Francisco with an equanimity bor...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

Sir, Sunday morning, although recurring at regular and well foreseen intervals, always seems to take...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

So I fell in love with a rich attorney's / Elderly ugly daughter.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

I often think it's comical / How Nature always does contrive / That every boy and every gal, / That'...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

A pleasant occupation for / A rather susceptible Chancellor!
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

Life is a joke that's just begun.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

Dukes were three a penny.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

Three little maids who, all unwary, / Come from a ladies' seminary.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

Man is nature's sole mistake.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

A wandering minstrel I - / A thing of shreds and patches.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT

If you wish in this world to advance your merits you're bound to enhance; You must stir it and s...
WILLIAM GILBERT

He combines the manners of a Marquis with the morals of a Methodist.
WILLIAM GILBERT

In the discovery of secret things and in the investigation of hidden causes, stronger reasons are ob...
WILLIAM GILBERT

Matrimonial devotion doesn't seem to suit her notion.
W. S. GILBERT

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

In enterprise of martial kind, when there was any fighting, he led his regiment from behind -- he fo...
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

Things are seldom what they seem.
W. S. GILBERT

I love my fellow creatures -- I do all the good I can -- yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable ...
W. S. GILBERT

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

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

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

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

I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descen...
W. S. GILBERT

You've no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself--and how little I deserve it.
W. S. GILBERT

My object all sublime I shall achieve in time...
W. S. GILBERT

You've no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself-and how little I deserve it.
W. S. GILBERT

When everyone is somebody, then no one's anybody.
W. S. GILBERT

Things are seldom what they seem, skim milk masquerades as cream.
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

Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and uncon...
W. S. GILBERT

If you wish in this world to advance, your merits you're bound to enhance; You must stir it and stum...
W. S. GILBERT

Virtue is simply happiness, and happiness is a by-product of function. You are happy when you are fu...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling b...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

And if you're doing a deal with a religious son of a bitch, get it in writing.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

I am not one of those weak-spirited, sappy Americans who want to be liked by all the people around t...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

You know a real friend?
Someone you know will look after your cat after you are gone.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American non-dream is precisely a move to wip...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. T...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Which came first the intestine or the tapeworm?
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd be dead in two weeks.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Kerouac and I are not real at all. The only thing about a writer is that he has written, and not his...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas. . . a cosmonaut of inner spa...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

A functioning police state needs no police.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

I think the ideal situation for a family is to be completely incestuous.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Humility is indeed beatness, a compulsory virtue that no one exhibits unless he has to.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

The face of evil is always the face of total need.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

I think there are innumerable gods. What we on earth call God is a little tribal God who has made an...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic s...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

I feel that any form of so called psychotherapy is strongly contraindicated for addicts. The questio...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

My general theory since 1971 has been that the word is literally a virus, and that it has not been r...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say I want to see the manager.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Black magic operates most effectively in preconscious, marginal areas. Casual curses are the most ef...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Junk is the ideal product... the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will craw...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Now what sort of man or woman or monster would stroke a centipede I have ever seen? And here is my g...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

The people in power will not disappear voluntarily, giving flowers to the cops just isn't going to w...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they h...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Intelligence and war are games, perhaps the only meaningful games left. If any player becomes too pr...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, becaus...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

So cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be don...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

A psychotic is a guy who's just found out what's going on.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Out of the closets and into the museums, libraries, architectural monuments, concert halls, bookstor...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Anything that can be done chemically can be done by other means.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

No atomic physicist has to worry, people will always want to kill other people on a mass scale. Sure...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

They tend to be suspicious, bristly, paranoid-type people with huge egos they push around like some ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

There is the pleasurable orgasm, like a rising sales graph, and there is the unpleasurable orgasm, s...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Admittedly, a homosexual can be conditioned to react sexually to a woman, or to an old boot for that...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

So cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be d...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I s...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Admittedly, a homosexual can be conditioned to react sexually to a woman, or to an old boot for that...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

You must learn to exist with no religion, no country, no allies. You must learn to live alone in sil...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

An addict never stops growing. Stupider.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Changes... can only be effected by alterations in the original. The only thing not prerecorded in a ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it....
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Like all pure creatures, cats are practical.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Language is a virus from outer space.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager....
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

What is public history but a register of the successes and disappointments, the vices, the follies a...
WILLIAM S. PALEY

Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use any other drug with special horror.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

The purpose of technology is not to confuse the brain but to serve the body.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

I am getting so far out one day I won't come back at all.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict; those who seek happiness for itself see...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Perhaps all pleasure is only relief.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas, a cosmonaut of inner space, ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

My relationships with my cats has saved me from a deadly, pervasive ignorance.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

If a weaker baboon be attacked by a stronger baboon the weaker baboon will either (a) present his hr...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Squatting on old bones and excrement and rusty iron, in a white blaze of heat, a panorama of naked i...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implemen...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

I see no reason why the artistic world can't absolutely merge with Madison Avenue. Pop art is a ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Gentle reader, the Fountain of Youth is radioactive, and those who imbibe its poisonous heavy waters...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

White lies always introduce others of a darker complexion.
WILLIAM S. PALEY

Visual art and writing don't exist on an aesthetic hierarchy that positions one above the other,...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Speaking for myself, art differs from writing in that I never know what I'm going to paint until...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

In the U.S. you have to be a deviant or exist in extreme boredom... Make no mistake, all intellectua...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Junk is the ultimate merchandise. The junk merchant does not sell his product to the consumer, he se...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say "I want to see the manager."
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Whether you sniff it smoke it eat it or shove it up your ass the result is the same: addiction.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

The Pusher always gets it all back.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say ''I want to see the manager.''
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Whenever anyone reads his words the writer is there. He lives in his readers.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million pairs of Levis to both sexes. Woodstock rise...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

If you rap your knuckles against a window jamb or door, if you brush your leg against a bed or desk,...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Truth is used to vitalize a statement rather than devitalize it. Truth implies more than a simple st...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

when I become death. Death is the seed from which I grow.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

No one owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

While we are not and cannot become the world's policeman, neither can we become a prisoner of world ...
WILLIAM S. COHEN

The way to kill a man or a nation is to cut off his dreams, the way the whites are taking care of th...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Kindness, Courtesy, Courage, and a Commitment to Academic Excellence" "But if everything goes wrong,...
WILLIAM S. HUNTER

In fact, they recapitulate the story of Christianity word for word, like the inevitable course of so...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

For while the threat of nuclear holocaust has been significantly reduced, the world remains a very u...
WILLIAM S. COHEN

When I say madness I mean what I see in a nut house: beat, resigned, dim, diffuse, nowhere people. N...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

I'm running out of everything now. Out of veins, out of money.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

The exact objectives of Islam Inc. are obscure. Needless to say everyone involved has a different an...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

This memorial is more than a remembrance, it's also a reminder that women in the military's service ...
WILLIAM S. COHEN

Terrorism is escalating to the point that Americans soon may have to choose between civil liberties ...
WILLIAM S. COHEN

We will not win the war on terror through military action. The sharing of information and intelligen...
WILLIAM S. COHEN

(1) Never give anything away for nothing. (2) Never give more than you have to give (always catch th...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Never give succor to the mentally ill; it is a bottomless pit.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

It is doubtful if shame can exist in the absence of sexual libido.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way with...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

When I become death, death is the seed from which I grow.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

My experience as an addict was very useful to me as writer: the whole syndrome of addiction and with...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

There is no intensity of love or feeling that does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. It is a d...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

The question is frequently asked: Why does a man become a drug addict?
The answer is that he us...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

The threat of terrorism taking place on American soil is real, with chemical, biological, indeed, as...
WILLIAM S. COHEN

The first and most important thing an individual can do is to become an individual again, decontrol ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

A Nazi initiation into the upper reaches of the SS was to gouge out the eye of a pet cat after feedi...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Comparisons deplete the actuality of the things compared... ("Conveyance: The Story I would Not Want...
WILLIAM S. WILSON

When you stop growing you start dying.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

To put it country simple. Earth has a lot of things other folks might want, like the whole planet. A...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

For she is such a smart little craft, Such a neat little, sweet little craft-- Such a bright little, Tight little, Slight little, Light little, Trim little, slim little craft!

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William S. Gilbert

For she is such a smart little craft, Such a neat little, sweet little craft-- Such a bright little, Tight little, Slight little, Light little, Trim little, slim little craft!

William S. Gilbert

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