Richard Sheridan Quotes

Never say more than is necessary.

Tale-bearers are as bad as the tale-makers.

The number of those who undergo the fatigue of judging for themselves is very small indeed.

Won't you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.

When of a gossiping circle it was asked, "What are they doing?" The answer was, "Swapping lies.

There is not a passion so strongly rooted in the human heart as envy.

Certainly nothing is unnatural that is not physically impossible.

A circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge.

To pity, without the power to relieve, is still more painful than to ask and be denied.

The newspapers! Sir, they are the most villainous — licentious — abominable — infernal — Not that I ever read them — no — I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper.

The heart that is conscious of its own integrity is ever slow to credit another´s treachery.

My hair has been in training some time.

The right honorable gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his facts.

If to raise malicious smiles at the infirmities or misfortunes of those who have never injured us be the province of wit or humour, Heaven grant me a double portion of dullness.

Had I a thousand daughters, by Heaven! I'd as soon have them taught the black art as their alphabet!

-'tis an old observation, and a very true one; but what's to be done, as I said before? how will you prevent people from talking?...

Egad, I think the interpreter is the hardest to be understood of the two!

Our ancestors are very good kind of folks; but they are the last people I should choose to have a visiting acquaintance with.

You write with ease, to show your breeding, But easy writing's curst hard reading.

There's no possibility of being witty without a little ill-nature.

Joy is designing and building something that actually sees the light of day and is enjoyably used and widely adopted by the people for whom it was intended.

Every organization needs to make room for the time or effort a person needs for his or her personal life, and the dividends of this effort are not measured in business terms.

I am compliance itself—when I am not thwarted;—no one more easily led—when I have my own way.

He is the very pineapple of politeness!

Alas! the devil's sooner raised than laid.

To smile at the jest which plants a thorn on another's breast is to become a principal in the mischief." Act 1 Scene 1 The School for Scandal

A company doesn’t exist to serve its own people; a company exists to serve the needs of the people who use its products or services.

... if Charles is undone, he'll find half his acquaintance ruined too, and that, you know, is a consolation.

MARIA. For my Part — I own madam — wit loses its respect with me, when I see it in company with malice. —

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.

The software industry, after all, defined the term “death march” in a business context: programmers pulling all-nighters, bringing sleeping bags to work, jettisoning time with loved ones, canceling vacations.

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.

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.

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.

(We rewarded staff for referrals—something I’ve since learned is one of the most terrible HR tactics ever invented if you want an intentionally joyful culture.)

SNEER. But, what the deuce, is the confidante to be mad too? PUFF. To be sure she is. The confidante is always to do whatever her mistress does- weep when she weeps, smile when she smiles, go mad when she goes mad.-Now, Madam Confidante! But keep your madness in the background, if you please.

He is the very pineapple of politeness!

First we shape our buildings, then they shape us. —WINSTON CHURCHILL, 1943

Mrs. Bri. Psha! there is nothing in it: a moment, and it is over. Just. Ay, but it leaves a numbness behind that lasts a plaguy long time.

The passion of these newly rich Americans for industrial merger yielded to an even more insistent passion for a merger of their newly acquired domains with more ancient ones; they wanted to veneer their arrivisme with the traditional. It would be gratifying to feel, as you drove up to your porte-cochère in Pittsburgh, that you were one with the jaded Renaissance Venetian who had just returned from a sitting for Titian; to feel, as you walked by the ranks of gleaming and authentic suits of armour in your mansion on Long Island – and passed the time of day with your private armourer – that it was only an accident of chronology that had put you in a counting house when you might have been jousting with other kings in the Tournament of Love; to push aside the heavy damask tablecloth on a magnificent Louis XIV dining-room table, making room for a green-shaded office lamp, beneath which you scanned the report of last month’s profit from the Saginaw branch, and then, looking up, catch a glimpse of Mrs Richard Brinsley Sheridan and flick the fantasy that presently you would be ordering your sedan chair, because the loveliest girl in London was expecting

Optimism is a fundamental choice of leadership.

Most organizations give lip service to “Fail fast.

Conversations Build Relationships, Relationships Build Value

We shipped poor-quality products that offered mountains of trouble for the users. When I voiced my concerns, executive peers assured me that there would be plenty of time to fix problems after delivery. I never saw that promise come true. When abundant problems did arrive as predicted, my bosses told me they never asked me to create such crappy products.

Just. Why, zounds! will you hear me or no?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The playwright Richard Sheridan was scathing in his denunciation of the Company, whose operations ‘combined the meanness of a pedlar with the profligacy of a pirate…

The Easy Aces was billed as “radio’s laugh novelty,” and Jane Ace was Mrs. Malaprop of the air. Jane had a twangy midwestern voice, slightly softer in natural conversation, that reminded a listener of Bernardine Flynn’s Sade Gook (Vic and Sade). She was one of radio’s enduring female screwballs, Gracie Allen and Marie Wilson being the others. Under the guidance of her husband and writer, Goodman Ace, she defined the term “malapropism” to a generation that had never heard of it or its creator. Mrs. Malaprop was a character in an 18th century play by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Her sentences were filled with wrong words that vaguely resembled proper speech and had a great comedic effect on audiences of that time. In the early 1930s, the Aces were effectively combining malapropisms with general “dumb blonde” humor.

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’.

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.

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

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.

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,

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

SIR BENJAMIN. Perhaps, Sir, you are not a Doctor. SIR OLIVER. Truly Sir I am to thank you for my degree If I am.