"Mrs Candour: I’ll swear her colour is natural—I have seen it come and go—Lady Teazle: I dare swear you have, ma’am; it goes of a night and comes again in the morning."

"She’s as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile."

"An aspersion upon my parts of speech!"

"’Tis safest in matrimony to begin with a little aversion. He is the very pineapple of politeness!"

"The throne we honour is the people’s choice."

"I was struck all of a heap."

"I wish sir, you would practise this without me. I can’t stay dying here all night. O Lord, Sir—when a heroine goes mad she always goes into white satin."

"If it is abuse,—why one is always sure to hear of it from one damned goodnatured friend or another!"

"You write with ease, to show your breeding, But easy writing’s vile hard reading."

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

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

"Inconsolable to the minuet in Ariadne."

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

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

"No scandal about Queen Elizabeth, I hope?"

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

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"It was an amiable weakness."

"Be just before you're generous."

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

"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."

"I leave my character behind me."

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

"You had no taste when you married me."

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

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

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

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

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

"I loved him for himself alone."

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

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

"I own the soft impeachment."

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Too civil by half."

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

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

"He is the very pineapple of politeness!"