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Things are seldom what they seem, Skim milk masquerades as cream.


William S. Gilbert

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More William S. Gilbert

Life is made up of interruptions.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT Then they began to sing That extremely lovely thing, "Scherzando! ma non troppo, ppp."
WILLIAM S. GILBERT I always voted at my party's call, And I never thought of thinking of myself at all.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT If you wish in this world to advance your merits you're bound to enhance; you must stir it and stump...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT As innocent as a new-laid egg.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT Now landsmen all, whoever you may be, If you want to rise to the top of the tree, If your soul...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT Oh, I am a cook and a captain bold And the mate of the Nancy brig, And a bo'sun tight and a mi...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT For she is such a smart little craft, Such a neat little, sweet little craft-- Such a bright l...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT Bad language or abuse I never, never use, Whatever the emergency; Though "Bother it" I m...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT Though "Bother it" I may Occasionally say, I never never use a big, big, D.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT Oh! to be wafted away From this black Aceldama of sorrow, Where the dust of an earthy to-day ...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT He is an Englishman! / For he himself has said it, / And it's greatly to his credit, / That he is an...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT You have no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself and how little I deserve it.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT I've got to take under my wing, / Tra la, / A most unattractive old thing, / Tra la, / With a carica...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT Take a pair of sparkling eyes.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT I'm a greenery-yallery, Grosvenor Gallery, / Foot-in-the-grave young man!
WILLIAM S. GILBERT I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pr...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT My family pride is something inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT Hearts just as pure and fair / May beat in Belgrave Square / As in the lowly air / Of Seven Dials.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT He uses language that would make your hair curl.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT Down went the owners -- greedy men whom hope of gain allured: oh, dry the starting tear, for they we...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT But they couldn't chat together - they had not been introduced.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT I was a pale young curate then.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT He led his regiment from behind - / He found it less exciting.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT For you dream you are crossing the Channel, and tossing about in a steamer from Harwich, / Which is ...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT We will hang you, never fear, Most politely, most politely.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT The mildest curate going.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT Time was when Love and I were well acquainted.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT Matrimonial devotion doesn't seem to suit her notion.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT And I always voted at my party's call, / And I never thought of thinking for myself at all.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT Take my counsel, happy man; / Act upon it, if you can!
WILLIAM S. GILBERT I'm called Little Buttercup - dear Little Buttercup, / Though I could never tell why.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT The constitutional guardian I, / Of pretty young Wards in Chancery.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT Something lingering with boiling oil in it . . . something humorous but lingering--with either boil...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT My object all sublime I shall achieve in time-- To let the punishment fit the crime.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT In enterprise of martial kind / When there was any fighting, / He led his reg'ment from behind / He ...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT Things are seldom what they seem.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT On a cloth untrue / With a twisted cue, / And elliptical billiard balls.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have, and I think he's a dirty little beast.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT Things are seldom what they seem, / Skim milk masquerades as cream.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT And I am right, And you are right, Modified rapture!
WILLIAM S. GILBERT I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT The House of Peers, throughout the war, / Did nothing in particular, / And did it very well.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT I am the very model of a modern Major-General; / I've information vegetable, animal and mineral; / I...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT When I first put this uniform on.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT A source of innocent merriment.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT She may very well pass for forty-three / In the dusk with a light behind her!
WILLIAM S. GILBERT It isn't so much what's on the table that matters, as what's on the chairs.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT Sir, I view the proposal to hold an international exhibition at San Francisco with an equanimity bor...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT Sir, Sunday morning, although recurring at regular and well foreseen intervals, always seems to take...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT So I fell in love with a rich attorney's / Elderly ugly daughter.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT I often think it's comical / How Nature always does contrive / That every boy and every gal, / That'...
WILLIAM S. GILBERT A pleasant occupation for / A rather susceptible Chancellor!
WILLIAM S. GILBERT Life is a joke that's just begun.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT Dukes were three a penny.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT Three little maids who, all unwary, / Come from a ladies' seminary.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT Man is nature's sole mistake.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT A wandering minstrel I - / A thing of shreds and patches.
WILLIAM S. GILBERT If you wish in this world to advance your merits you're bound to enhance; You must stir it and s...
WILLIAM GILBERT He combines the manners of a Marquis with the morals of a Methodist.
WILLIAM GILBERT In the discovery of secret things and in the investigation of hidden causes, stronger reasons are ob...
WILLIAM GILBERT Matrimonial devotion doesn't seem to suit her notion.
W. S. GILBERT My family pride is something inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering.
W. S. GILBERT In enterprise of martial kind, when there was any fighting, he led his regiment from behind -- he fo...
W. S. GILBERT No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have; and I think he's a dirty little beast.
W. S. GILBERT Things are seldom what they seem.
W. S. GILBERT I love my fellow creatures -- I do all the good I can -- yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable ...
W. S. GILBERT It isn't so much what's on the table that matters, as what's on the chairs.
W. S. GILBERT The idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, All centuries but this, and every country but his own...
W. S. GILBERT Down went the owners -- greedy men whom hope of gain allured: oh, dry the starting tear, for they we...
W. S. GILBERT I always voted at my party's call, and I never thought of thinking for myself at all.
W. S. GILBERT Darwinian man, though well-behaved, at best is only a monkey shaved.
W. S. GILBERT You have no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself; and how little I deserve it.
W. S. GILBERT I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descen...
W. S. GILBERT You've no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself--and how little I deserve it.
W. S. GILBERT My object all sublime I shall achieve in time...
W. S. GILBERT You've no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself-and how little I deserve it.
W. S. GILBERT When everyone is somebody, then no one's anybody.
W. S. GILBERT Things are seldom what they seem, skim milk masquerades as cream.
W. S. GILBERT No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have, and I think he's a dirty little beast.
W. S. GILBERT Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and uncon...
W. S. GILBERT If you wish in this world to advance, your merits you're bound to enhance; You must stir it and stum...
W. S. GILBERT Virtue is simply happiness, and happiness is a by-product of function. You are happy when you are fu...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling b...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS And if you're doing a deal with a religious son of a bitch, get it in writing.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS I am not one of those weak-spirited, sappy Americans who want to be liked by all the people around t...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS You know a real friend?
Someone you know will look after your cat after you are gone.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American non-dream is precisely a move to wip...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. T...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Which came first the intestine or the tapeworm?
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd be dead in two weeks.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Kerouac and I are not real at all. The only thing about a writer is that he has written, and not his...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas. . . a cosmonaut of inner spa...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS A functioning police state needs no police.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS I think the ideal situation for a family is to be completely incestuous.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Humility is indeed beatness, a compulsory virtue that no one exhibits unless he has to.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The face of evil is always the face of total need.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS I think there are innumerable gods. What we on earth call God is a little tribal God who has made an...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic s...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS I feel that any form of so called psychotherapy is strongly contraindicated for addicts. The questio...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS My general theory since 1971 has been that the word is literally a virus, and that it has not been r...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say I want to see the manager.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Black magic operates most effectively in preconscious, marginal areas. Casual curses are the most ef...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Junk is the ideal product... the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will craw...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Now what sort of man or woman or monster would stroke a centipede I have ever seen? And here is my g...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The people in power will not disappear voluntarily, giving flowers to the cops just isn't going to w...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they h...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Intelligence and war are games, perhaps the only meaningful games left. If any player becomes too pr...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, becaus...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS So cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be don...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS A psychotic is a guy who's just found out what's going on.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Out of the closets and into the museums, libraries, architectural monuments, concert halls, bookstor...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Anything that can be done chemically can be done by other means.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS No atomic physicist has to worry, people will always want to kill other people on a mass scale. Sure...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS They tend to be suspicious, bristly, paranoid-type people with huge egos they push around like some ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS There is the pleasurable orgasm, like a rising sales graph, and there is the unpleasurable orgasm, s...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Admittedly, a homosexual can be conditioned to react sexually to a woman, or to an old boot for that...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS So cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be d...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I s...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Admittedly, a homosexual can be conditioned to react sexually to a woman, or to an old boot for that...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS You must learn to exist with no religion, no country, no allies. You must learn to live alone in sil...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS An addict never stops growing. Stupider.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Changes... can only be effected by alterations in the original. The only thing not prerecorded in a ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it....
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Like all pure creatures, cats are practical.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Language is a virus from outer space.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager....
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS What is public history but a register of the successes and disappointments, the vices, the follies a...
WILLIAM S. PALEY Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use any other drug with special horror.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The purpose of technology is not to confuse the brain but to serve the body.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS I am getting so far out one day I won't come back at all.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict; those who seek happiness for itself see...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Perhaps all pleasure is only relief.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas, a cosmonaut of inner space, ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS My relationships with my cats has saved me from a deadly, pervasive ignorance.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS If a weaker baboon be attacked by a stronger baboon the weaker baboon will either (a) present his hr...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Squatting on old bones and excrement and rusty iron, in a white blaze of heat, a panorama of naked i...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implemen...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS I see no reason why the artistic world can't absolutely merge with Madison Avenue. Pop art is a ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Gentle reader, the Fountain of Youth is radioactive, and those who imbibe its poisonous heavy waters...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS White lies always introduce others of a darker complexion.
WILLIAM S. PALEY Visual art and writing don't exist on an aesthetic hierarchy that positions one above the other,...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Speaking for myself, art differs from writing in that I never know what I'm going to paint until...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS In the U.S. you have to be a deviant or exist in extreme boredom... Make no mistake, all intellectua...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Junk is the ultimate merchandise. The junk merchant does not sell his product to the consumer, he se...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say "I want to see the manager."
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Whether you sniff it smoke it eat it or shove it up your ass the result is the same: addiction.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The Pusher always gets it all back.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say ''I want to see the manager.''
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Whenever anyone reads his words the writer is there. He lives in his readers.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million pairs of Levis to both sexes. Woodstock rise...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS If you rap your knuckles against a window jamb or door, if you brush your leg against a bed or desk,...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Truth is used to vitalize a statement rather than devitalize it. Truth implies more than a simple st...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS when I become death. Death is the seed from which I grow.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS No one owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS While we are not and cannot become the world's policeman, neither can we become a prisoner of world ...
WILLIAM S. COHEN The way to kill a man or a nation is to cut off his dreams, the way the whites are taking care of th...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Kindness, Courtesy, Courage, and a Commitment to Academic Excellence" "But if everything goes wrong,...
WILLIAM S. HUNTER In fact, they recapitulate the story of Christianity word for word, like the inevitable course of so...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS For while the threat of nuclear holocaust has been significantly reduced, the world remains a very u...
WILLIAM S. COHEN When I say madness I mean what I see in a nut house: beat, resigned, dim, diffuse, nowhere people. N...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS I'm running out of everything now. Out of veins, out of money.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The exact objectives of Islam Inc. are obscure. Needless to say everyone involved has a different an...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS This memorial is more than a remembrance, it's also a reminder that women in the military's service ...
WILLIAM S. COHEN Terrorism is escalating to the point that Americans soon may have to choose between civil liberties ...
WILLIAM S. COHEN We will not win the war on terror through military action. The sharing of information and intelligen...
WILLIAM S. COHEN (1) Never give anything away for nothing. (2) Never give more than you have to give (always catch th...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Never give succor to the mentally ill; it is a bottomless pit.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS It is doubtful if shame can exist in the absence of sexual libido.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way with...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS When I become death, death is the seed from which I grow.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS My experience as an addict was very useful to me as writer: the whole syndrome of addiction and with...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS There is no intensity of love or feeling that does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. It is a d...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The question is frequently asked: Why does a man become a drug addict?
The answer is that he us...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS The threat of terrorism taking place on American soil is real, with chemical, biological, indeed, as...
WILLIAM S. COHEN The first and most important thing an individual can do is to become an individual again, decontrol ...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS A Nazi initiation into the upper reaches of the SS was to gouge out the eye of a pet cat after feedi...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Comparisons deplete the actuality of the things compared... ("Conveyance: The Story I would Not Want...
WILLIAM S. WILSON When you stop growing you start dying.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS To put it country simple. Earth has a lot of things other folks might want, like the whole planet. A...
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS