Frasi di William Schwenck Gilbert pagina 2

“Il significato non importa se è soltanto una chiacchiera vuota di un tipo trascendentale.”

da Princess Ida; citato in Fernando Palazzi, Silvio Spaventa Filippi, Il libro dei mille savi, Hoepli

“La devozione matrimoniale non sembra adatta al suo credo.”

“La filosofia è per pochi.”

“La vita è uno scherzo che è appena cominciato.”

“Non proviamo a produrre idee, preferendo aspettare che gli eventi accadano da soli. Per creare bisogna liberarsi da ogni pensiero artistico.”

“…in the first place, self decapitation is an extremely difficult, not to say dangerous, thing to attempt; and, in the second, it’s suicide, and suicide is a capital offence.”

William Schwenck Gilbert: Frasi in inglese

“I know a youth who loves a little maid—
(Hey, but his face is a sight for to see!)
Silent is he, for he's modest and afraid
(Hey, but he's timid as a youth can be!)”

The Mikado (1885)

“From such a face and form as mine, the noblest sentiments sound like the black utterances of a depraved imagination!
It's human nature! I'm resigned.”

Ruddigore (1887)

“I know what love is. There was a happy time when I didn't, but bitter experience has taught me.”

H.M.S. Pinafore (1878)

“[Koko is negotiating the terms by which he can behead Nanki-Poo in his place, and they involve letting the latter be married to his fiance until he is executed]
Koko: But my position during the next month will be most unpleasant, most unpleasant!
Nanki-Poo: Not nearly so unpleasant as mine at the end of it.”

Patience (1881)

“When your process of extermination begins, let our deaths be as swift and painless as you can conveniently make them.”

The Mikado (1885)

“The House of Peers, thoughout the war
Did nothing in particular
And did it very well.”

The Pirates of Penzance (1879)

“By doing so, we shall, in course of time,
Regenerate completely our entire land—
Great Britain is that monarchy sublime,
To which some add (but others do not) Ireland.”

Iolanthe (1882)

“One of you may be Baptisto's son, for anything I know to the contrary; but the other is no less a personage than the only son
of the late King of Barataria. … And I trust — I trust it was that one who slapped me on the shoulder and called me his man!”

Final chorus, concluding lines.
Utopia Limited (1893)

“Bad language or abuse
I never, never use,
Whatever the emergency;
Though "Bother it" I may
Occasionally say,
I never use a big, big D-”

The Gondoliers (1889)

“Art stopped short at the cultivated court of the Empress Josephine.”

The first Lord's Song (from HMS Pinafore).
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Patience (1881)

“My object all sublime
I shall achieve in time—
To let the punishment fit the crime,
The punishment fit the crime.”

"Unappreciated Shakespeare", Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, Christmas Number, 9 December 1882.

“Life's a pudding full of plums;
Care's a canker that benumbs,
Wherefore waste our elocution
On impossible solution?
Life's a pleasant institution,
Let us take it as it comes!”

The Mikado (1885)

“I can tell a woman's age in half a minute — and I do!”

The tangled Skein.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.”

Princess Ida (1884)

“Archibald: To understand this, it is not necessary to think of anything at all.
Saphir: Let us think of nothing at all!”

The Mikado (1885)

“I've jibe and joke,
And quip and crank,
For lowly folk
And men of rank.”

Patience (1881)

“When maiden loves, she sits and sighs,
She wanders to and fro -
Unbidden tear-drops fill her eyes,
And to all questions she replies
With a sad "heigh ho!"”

The Yeomen of the Guard (1888)

“I have a left shoulder-blade that is a miracle of loveliness. People come miles to see it. My right elbow has a fascination that few can resist.”

The Yeomen of the Guard (1888)

“There's a little group of isles beyond the wave,
So tiny you might almost wonder where it is—
That nation is the bravest of the brave,
And cowards are the rarest of all rarities.
The proudest nations kneel at her command,
She terrifies all foreign-born rap-scallions;
And holds the peace of Europe in her hand
With half a score invincible battalions.”

The Mikado (1885)

“In enterprise of martial kind,
When there was any fighting,
He led his regiment from behind—
He found it less exciting.”

Final chorus.
Utopia Limited (1893)

“Ah, take one consideration with another
A policeman's lot is not a happy one!”

The Gondoliers (1889)

“Then a sentimental passion of a vegetable fashion must excite your languid spleen,
An attachment à la Plato for a bashful young potato, or a not-too-French French bean!
Though the Philistines may jostle, you will rank as an apostle in the high aesthetic band,
If you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily in your medieval hand.”

The Policeman's Lot (from The Pirates of Penzance).
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“As innocent as a new-laid egg.”

Act I
Patience (1881)

“He is an Englishman!
For he himself has said it,
And it's greatly to his credit,
That he is an Englishman!.

For he might have been a Rooshian
A French or Turk or Proosian,
Or perhaps Itali-an.
But in spite of all temptations
To belong to other nations,
He remains an Englishman.”

W. S. Gilbert Engaged

Engaged.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“What, never? / No, never! / What, never? / Well, hardly ever!”

The Englishman (from HMS Pinafore).
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Roll on, thou ball, roll on
Through pathless realms of space,
Roll on!”

H.M.S. Pinafore (1878)

“To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock,
In a pestilential prison, with a life-long lock,
Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock,
From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!”

To the Terrestrial Globe.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Man is nature's sole mistake.”

The Mikado (1885)