Satirists From Ireland

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

"Believe not each accusing tongue, As most weak persons do; But still believe that story wrong, Which ought not to be true!"

"'Tis safest in matrimony to begin with a little aversion."

"Illiterate him, I say, quite from your memory."

"A progeny of learning."

"Never say more than is necessary."

"I know you are laughing in your sleeve."

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

"He is the very pineapple of politeness!"

"If I reprehend anything in this world, it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice derangement of epitaphs!"

"As headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile."

"Too civil by half."

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

"We will not anticipate the past; so mind, young people, — our retrospection will be all to the future."

"No caparisons, miss, if you please. Caparisons don't become a young woman."

"You are not like Cerberus, three gentlemen at once, are you?"

"The quarrel is a very pretty quarrel as it stands; we should only spoil it by trying to explain it."

"You're our enemy; lead the way, and we 'll precede."

"There's nothing like being used to a thing."

"As there are three of us come on purpose for the game, you won't be so cantankerous as to spoil the party by sitting out."

"My valour is certainly going! — it is sneaking off! I feel it oozing out, as it were, at the palm of my hands!"

"I own the soft impeachment."

"Through all the drama — whether damned or not — Love gilds the scene, and women guide the plot."

"I ne'er could any luster see In eyes that would not look on me."

"I loved him for himself alone."

"A bumper of good liquor Will end a contest quicker Than justice, judge, or vicar."

"Had I a heart for falsehood framed, I ne'er could injure you."

"Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics."

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

"You shall see them on a beautiful quarto page, where a neat rivulet of text shall meander through a meadow of margin."

"You had no taste when you married me."

"Here is the whole set! a character dead at every word."

"I leave my character behind me."

"Here's to the maiden of bashful fifteen; Here's to the widow of fifty; Here's to the flaunting, extravegant quean, And here's to the housewife that's thrifty. Let the toast pass — Drink to the lass; I'll warrant she'll prove an excuse for the glass."

"An unforgiving eye, and a damned disinheriting countenance."

"Be just before you're generous."

"It was an amiable weakness."

"Steal! to be sure they may; and, egad, serve your best thoughts as gypsies do stolen children,—disfigure them to make 'em pass for their own."

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

"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."

"Sheer necessity,—the proper parent of an art so nearly allied to invention."

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

"A practitioner in panegyric, or, to speak more plainly, a professor of the art of puffing."

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

"No scandal about Queen Elizabeth, I hope?"

"Certainly nothing is unnatural that is not physically impossible."

"Where they do agree on the stage, their unanimity is wonderful."

"Inconsolable to the minuet in Ariadne."

"The Spanish fleet thou canst not see, because—it is not yet in sight!"

"I wish, sir, you would practice this without me. I can't stay dying here all night."