Quotes by Librettists

Perhaps if you address the lady Most politely most politely Flatter and impress the lady Most politely most politely Humbly beg and humbly sue She may deign to look on you.
W.S. Gilbert
It is not wise to be wiser than is necessary.
Philippe Quinault
No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have - and I think he's a dirty little beast.
W.S. Gilbert
Every noble acquisition is attended with its risks he who fears to encounter the one must not expect to obtain the other.
Pietro Metastasio
If you wish in this world to advance Your merits you're bound to enhance You must stir it and stump it And blow your own trumpet Or trust me you haven't a chance.
W.S. Gilbert
Every noble acquisition is attended with its risks he who fears to encounter the one must not expect to obtain the other
Pietro Metastasio
No matter where I run I meet myself there.
Dorothy Fields
And so do his sisters and his cousins and his aunts! His sisters and his cousins Whom he reckons up by dozens And his aunts!
W.S. Gilbert
My object all sublime I shall achieve in time - To let the punishment fit the crime.
W.S. Gilbert
You must stir it and stump it and blow your own trumpet or trust me you haven't a chance.
W.S. Gilbert
I always voted at my party's call And I never thought of thinking for myself at all.
W.S. Gilbert
If every man's internal care Were written on his brow How many would our pity share Who raise our envy now?
Pietro Metastasio
When every blessed thing you have is made of silver or of gold you long for simple pewter.
W.S. Gilbert
I am not fond of uttering platitudes In stained-glass attitudes.
W.S. Gilbert
You've no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself - and how little I deserve it.
W.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 midshipmate And the crew of the captain's gig.
W.S. Gilbert
Now landsmen all whoever you may be If you want to rise to the top of the tree. If your soul isn't fettered to an office stool Be careful to be guided by this golden rule - Stick close to your desks and never go to to sea And you may all be Rulers of the Queen's Navee.
W.S. Gilbert
No matter where I run I meet myself there.
Dorothy Fields
And so do his sisters and his cousins and his aunts! His sisters and his cousins Whom he reckons up by dozens And his aunts!
W.S. Gilbert
My object all sublime I shall achieve in time - To let the punishment fit the crime.
W.S. Gilbert
You must stir it and stump it and blow your own trumpet or trust me you haven't a chance.
W.S. Gilbert
I always voted at my party's call And I never thought of thinking for myself at all.
W.S. Gilbert
If every man's internal care Were written on his brow How many would our pity share Who raise our envy now?
Pietro Metastasio
When every blessed thing you have is made of silver or of gold you long for simple pewter.
W.S. Gilbert
I am not fond of uttering platitudes In stained-glass attitudes.
W.S. Gilbert
You've no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself - and how little I deserve it.
W.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 midshipmate And the crew of the captain's gig.
W.S. Gilbert
Now landsmen all whoever you may be If you want to rise to the top of the tree. If your soul isn't fettered to an office stool Be careful to be guided by this golden rule - Stick close to your desks and never go to to sea And you may all be Rulers of the Queen's Navee.
W.S. Gilbert
Sure I love the dear silver that shines in your hair And the brow that's all furrowed and wrinkled with care. I kiss the dear fingers so toil-worn for me Oh God bless you and keep you Mother Machree.
Rida Johnson Young
A source of innocent merriment! Of innocent merriment.
W.S. Gilbert
And whether you're an honest man or whether you're a thief depends on whose solicitor has given me my brief.
W.S. Gilbert
You may have the universe if I may have Italy.
Temistocle Solera
As innocent as a new-laid egg.
W.S. Gilbert
Did nothing in particular and did it very well.
W.S. Gilbert
Darwinian Man though well-behaved At best is only a monkey shaved!
W.S. Gilbert
See the conquering hero comes! Sound the trumpets beat the drums!
Thomas Morell
See how the Fates their gifts allot. For A is happy - B is not. Yet B is worthy I dare say Of more prosperity than A.
W.S. Gilbert
For the facts that make up the world need the non-factual as a vantage point from which to be perceived.
Ingeborg Bachmann
For he might have been a Rooshian A French or Turk or Proosian Or perhaps Italian. But in spite of all temptations To belong to other nations He remains an Englishman.
W.S. Gilbert
He did nothing in particular And did it very well.
W.S. Gilbert
I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls With vassals and serfs at my side.
Alfred Bunn
Of that there is no manner of doubt - No probable possible shadow of doubt - No possible doubt whatever.
W.S. Gilbert
Time has told me less than I need to know.
Gwen Harwood
The bee and the serpent often sip from the selfsame flower.
Pietro Metastasio
Things are seldom what they seem Skim milk masquerades as cream.
W.S. Gilbert
Did nothing in particular And did it very well.
W.S. Gilbert
A single tear forms, just in the corner of one eye, but it doesn't roll down my cheek; it merely crystallizes in the cold air, it grows and grows into a second giant globe that doesn't want to orbit with the world—it breaks off from the planet and plunges into infinity.
Ingeborg Bachmann
...we take care not to touch each other in public, nor do we look into each other's eyes except furtively, because Ivan must first wash my eyes with his own, removing the images which landed on my retina before his arrival.
Ingeborg Bachmann
My favorite, how did you put it now? Landscapes, animals, plants? Favorite what? Books, music, architecture, painting? I don't have any favorite animals, no favorite mosquitoes, favorite beetles, favorite worms, even with the best will in the world I cannot tell you which birds or fish or predators I prefer, it would also be difficult for me to have to choose much more generally.
Ingeborg Bachmann
With the aid of a minute correction - that of the dispersing lens - in a gold frame perched on her nose, Miranda can see into hell.
Ingeborg Bachmann
But Beatrix knew very well that there were no jobs, not even the most pitiful office routine - she wasn't even qualified for that - and that no one would allow her to sleep until late in the afternoon because these ill-advised people all around her let themselves be squeezed into schedules; that she would never work, least of all learn a trade, because she had no ambition whatsoever to earn a single shilling, become self-supporting and spend eight hours a day with people who smelled bad.
Ingeborg Bachmann
...the simple task of getting dressed and undressed was a real strain, but nothing could compare with her addiction to deep sleep...
Ingeborg Bachmann
Crushed again!
W.S. Gilbert
And the next day the gondolier came with a train of other gondoliers, all decked in their holiday garb, and on his gondola sat Angela, happy, and blushing at her happiness. Then he and she entered the house in which I dwelt, and came into my room (and it was strange indeed, after so many years of inversion, to see her with her head above her feet!), and then she wished me happiness and a speedy restoration to good health (which could never be); and I in broken words and with tears in my eyes, gave her the little silver crucifix that had stood by my bed or my table for so many years. And Angela took it reverently, and crossed herself, and kissed it, and so departed with her delighted husband.And as I heard the song of the gondoliers as they went their way--the song dying away in the distance as the shadows of the sundown closed around me--I felt that they were singing the requiem of the only love that had ever entered my heart.
W.S. Gilbert
As it was all was lost. He was alive, yes, he was alive, he felt this for the first time. But he knew now that he was living in a prison, that he had to make the best of it in there and would soon rage and would have to speak this thieves' cant, the only language at his disposal, in order not to be so abandoned.
Ingeborg Bachmann
No new world without a new language.
Ingeborg Bachmann
Miranda doesn't dream, she simply rests. When Miranda's eyes are at ease, her mind is at peace.
Ingeborg Bachmann
You wouldn't believe it, but apart from a few drunks, a few sex murderers and other men who get into the papers where they are designated as criminals of passion, no normal man with normal drives has the obvious idea that a normal woman would like to be quite normally raped. Part of it is that men aren't normal, but people are incapable of even imagining all the ramifications of the male disease, so accustomed have they become to men's mistakes in judgment and their phenomenal lack of instinct.
Ingeborg Bachmann
Oh, dry the glistening tear that dues that marshal cheekThy loving childern here in them thy comfort seek With sympathetic care their arms around the creep, For oh they can not bear to see their father weep
W.S. Gilbert
Probably you were not quite well, my little dove, when you wrote to me, for a note of real melancholy pervaded your letter. I recognized in it a nature closely akin to my own. I know the feeling only too well. In my life, too, there are days, hours, weeks, aye, and months, in which everything looks black, when I am tormented by the thought that I am forsaken, that no one cares for me. Indeed, my life is of little worth to anyone. Were I to vanish from the face of the earth to-day, it would be no great loss to Russian music, and would certainly cause no one great unhappiness. In short, I live a selfish bachelor’s life. I work for myself alone, and care only for myself. This is certainly very comfortable, although dull, narrow, and lifeless. But that you, who are indispensable to so many whose happiness you make, that you can give way to depression, is more than I can believe. How can you doubt for a moment the love and esteem of those who surround you? How could it be possible not to love you? No, there is no one in the world more dearly loved than you are. As for me, it would be absurd to speak of my love for you. If I care for anyone, it is for you, for your family, for my brothers and our old Dad. I love you all, not because you are my relations, but because you are the best people in the world.
Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky