18th-century Playwright Quotes

Walter Scott

Pierre Beaumarchais

Carlo Goldoni

David Garrick

Olympe de Gouges

Adam Oehlenschläger

John Burgoyne

He who talks much cannot always talk well.

Cheerfulness, sir, is the principal ingredient in the composition of health.

Women, rouse yourselves! The tocsin of reason resounds through the whole universe: recognize your rights. The powerful empire of nature is no longer surrounded by prejudices, fanaticism, superstition and lies.

Olympe de Gouges

A Universalist, your heart cannot but dilate, and your affections widen, until the divine expansion, like the ambient atmosphere, embraces every form, which is acted upon by an immortal spirit.

Judith Sargent Murray

He seems a little under the weather, somehow; and yet he's not sick.

Look upon my web so fine, See how threads with threads entwine; If the evening wind alone Thus within the darkest place Breathe upon it, all is gone.

Adam Oehlenschläger

Find earth where grows no weed, and you may find a heart wherein no error grows.

James Sheridan Knowles

These wretched kings,
Of whom all men speak ill, have oft some good in them.

François Andrieux

Yes, I'm in love, I feel it now And Caelia has undone me; And yet I swear I can't tell how The pleasing plague stole on me.

William Whitehead

The man of mark is never appreciated, either in his lifetime or in his own country.

Camillo Federici

He is the happiest who renders the greatest number happy.

Joseph-François-Édouard de Corsembleu

I vow and protest there's more plague than pleasure with a secret.

George Colman the Elder

But from the hoop's bewitching round,
Her very shoe has power to wound.

The wise maketh every thing the means of advantage; and with the same countenance beholdeth he all the faces of fortune: he governeth the good, he conquereth the evil; he is unmov'd in all. Presume not in prosperity, neither despair thou in adversity.

Plays, gentlemen, are to their authors what children are to women: they cost more pain than they give pleasure.

Pierre Beaumarchais

But if I'm content with a little, Enough is as good as a feast.

Isaac Bickerstaffe

The onset of bayonets in the hands of the valiant is irresistible.

In the first days
Of my distracting grief, I found myself
As women wish to be who love their lords.

Any fool can play tragedy, but comedy, sir, is a damned serious business.

Handy, jun. Zounds, the room's in a blaze!
Sir Abel. Don't say so, Bob.
Handy, jun. What's to be done? Where's your famous preparation for extinguishing flames?
Sir Abel. It is not mixed.
Handy, jun. Where's your fire escape?
Sir Abel. It is not fixed.
Handy, jun. Where's your patent fire engine?
Sir Abel. 'Tis on the road.
Handy, jun. Well, you are never at a loss.
Sir Abel. Never.
Handy, jun. What's to be done?
Sir Abel. I don't know.

The progress of the American Revolution has been so rapid and such the alteration of manners, the blending of characters, and the new train of ideas that almost universally prevail, that the principles which animated to the noblest exertions have been nearly annihilated.

Mercy Otis Warren

Beauty hath no lustre save when it gleameth through the crystal web that purity's fine fingers weave for it.

Charles Maturin

She's adorned
Amply that in her husband's eye looks lovely,—
The truest mirror that an honest wife
Can see her beauty in.

For as the old saying is,
When house and land are gone and spent
Then learning is most excellent.

O Richard! O my king!
The universe forsakes thee!

Michel-Jean Sedaine