69 quotes
Things are seldom what they seem;
Skim milk masquerades as cream.
H.M.S. Pinafore (1878)
I always voted at my party's call,
And I never thought of thinking for myself at all.
Three little maids from school are we,
Pert as a schoolgirl well can be,
Filled to the brim with girlish glee.
When your process of extermination begins, let our deaths be as swift and painless as you can conveniently make them.
The Pirates of Penzance (1879)
Man is a ribald—Man’s a rake,
Man is Nature’s sole mistake!
She may very well pass for forty three
In the dusk with the light behind her.
Trial by Jury (1875)
Ah, take one consideration with another
A policeman's lot is not a happy one!
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)
The daughters of Major-General Stanley, explaining to him the context of declaration of marriage by the various members of the pirate band.
The Pirates of Penzance (1879)
In spite of all temptations
To belong to other nations,
He remains an Englishman!
H.M.S. Pinafore (1878)
When constabulary duty's to be done
A policeman's lot is not a happy one.
Oh, I am a cook and a captain bold
And the mate of the Nancy brig,
And a bo'sun tight and a midshipmite
And the crew of the captain's gig.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)
Exactly – you said "often" ('frequently') only once.
The Pirates of Penzance (1879)
Something lingering with boiling oil in it…. something humorous but lingering—with either boiling oil or melted lead.
My object all sublime
I shall achieve in time—
To let the punishment fit the crime,
The punishment fit the crime.
The Mikado (1885)
Roll on, thou ball, roll on
Through pathless realms of space,
Roll on!
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)
So I fell in love with a rich attorney's
Elderly, ugly daughter.
Trial by Jury (1875)
No, Frederic, it cannot be. I don’t think much of our profession, but, contrasted with respectability, it is comparatively honest.
The Pirates of Penzance (1879)
The idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone,
All centuries but this and every country but his own.
The Mikado (1885)
I love my fellow-creatures, I do all the good I can,
Yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable man
And I can't think why!
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)
Her terrible tale
You can't assail,
With truth it quite agrees;
Her taste exact
For faultless fact
Amounts to a disease.