Gil Blas quotes

As their wages were their fortune, I might have got my education as I could, had it not been for an uncle of mine in the town, a canon, by name Gil Pérez. He was my mother’s eldest brother, and my godfather.

Figure to yourself a little fellow, three feet and a half high, as fat as you can conceive, with a head sunk deep between his shoulders, and you have my uncle to the life.

For the rest of his qualities, he was an ecclesiastic, and of course thought of nothing but good living, I mean in the flesh as well as in the spirit, with the means of which good living his stall, no lean one, provided him.

They enjoined me to pray to God for my uncle, to go honestly through the world, not to engage in any ill, and above all, not to lay my hands on other people’s property.

After they had lectured me for a good while, they made me a present of their blessing, which was all my patrimony and all my expectation.

As soon as I had received it, I mounted my mule, and saw the outside of the town.

From this time forward be on your guard against extravagant praise. Do not trust men till you know them. You may meet with many another man, who, like me, may amuse himself at your expense, and perhaps carry the joke a little further.

But do not you be taken in a second time, to believe yourself, on the word of such fellows, the eighth wonder of the world.

” With this sting in the tail of his farewell speech he very coolly took his leave.

Their masters kept tight hold of me, and let the trap down after them.

Thus was the worthy nephew of my uncle Pérez caught, just for all the world as you would catch a rat.

To say nothing of an olive complexion, she had an enormous chin turning up, an immense nose turning down, with a mouth in the middle, modestly retiring inwards, to make room for its encroaching neighbors.

Red eyes are no beauty in any animal but a ferret;⁠—hers were purple.

“Here, dame Leonarda,” said one of the horsemen as he presented me to this angelic imp of darkness, “we have brought you a young lad.” Then looking round, and observing me to be miserably pale, “Pluck up your spirits, my friend;

You are sure, my good lad, to lead a pleasant life here; for I do not think you are fool enough to make any bones about consorting with gentlemen of the road. In what does ours differ from many a more reputable trade?

Depend on it, my friend, all men love two hands in their neighbor’s purse, though only one in their own.

Men’s principles are all alike; the only difference lies in the mode of carrying them into effect. Conquerors, for instance, make free with the territories of their neighbors. People of fashion borrow, and do not pay.

In what does ours differ from many a more reputable trade? Depend on it, my friend, all men love two hands in their neighbor’s purse, though only one in their own.

Men’s principles are all alike; the only difference lies in the mode of carrying them into effect.

Conquerors, for instance, make free with the territories of their neighbors. People of fashion borrow, and do not pay. Bankers, treasurers, brokers, clerks, and traders of all kinds, wholesale and retail, give ample liberty to their wants to overdraw on their consciences.

but most of them had the advantage of better horses than mine: had they seen me making off, they would have been at my heels, and would soon have caught me, or perhaps would have fired a volley, for which I was not sufficiently case-hardened.

I could not therefore venture on so perilous an alternative; so that claiming acquaintance with the reverend father, I asked to look at his purse, and just put out the end of a pistol.

He stopped short to gaze upon me; and, without seeming much frightened, said, “My child, you are very young; this is an early apprenticeship to a bad trade.”

I bought some linen, a hat, silk stockings, shoes, and a sword; and concluded by putting on my purchases. What pleasure was it to see myself so well accoutred! My eyes were never cloyed, as it were, with the richness of my attire.

Never did peacock look at his own plumage with less philosophy.

On that very day, I paid a second visit to Doña Mencía, who received me with her usual affability. She thanked me over again for the service I had rendered her. On that subject, rapid was the interchange of compliments.

On that subject, rapid was the interchange of compliments. Then, wishing every kind of success, she bade me farewell, and withdrew, without giving me anything but a ring worth thirty pistoles, which she begged me to keep as a remembrance.

I looked very foolish with my ring!

I had reckoned on a much more considerable present. Thus, little satisfied with the lady’s bounty, I measured back my steps in a very musing attitude:

and I was ready to burst with anguish. Alas! thought I, I am no judge of jewelry, but I shall be, by experience of these hucksters who exchange without a robbery. I need not go to a jeweller to be told I am an ass!

I can see my own face in my ruby.

Yet I did not neglect to know the truth respecting the value of my ring, and showed it to a lapidary, who rated it at three ducats.

The trade of a lackey is toilsome, to be sure, for a poor creature; but for a lad of spirit it is all enchantment. A superior genius, when he gets a service, does not go about it like a lumpish simpleton.

He enters into a family as viceroy over the master, not as an inferior minister.

He begins by measuring the length of his employer’s foot; by lending himself to his weaknesses, he gains his confidence, and ends with leading him by the nose. Such has been my plan of operation at the governor’s.

“Ah! just so,” answered the lady chamberlain, “I recollect! You are an old acquaintance. Welladay now! Your very belonging to Señor Ordóñez is enough to prove you a youth of merit and strict propriety.

A servant is known by his place, and this lad could not have a better sponsor.

Come along with me; I will introduce you to Señor Sédillo. I am sure he will be glad to engage a lad at your recommendation.”

“O, you are in the right,” resumed I; “our enemies must not gain this triumph over us; they would say that you were out of conceit with your own systems, and would ruin your reputation for inconsistency.

Perish the people, perish rather our nobility and clergy! But let us go on in the old path.

After all, our brethern of the faculty, with all their tenderness about bleeding, have no patent for longevity any more than ourselves; and we may set off their drugs against our specifics.”

But let us go on in the old path. After all, our brethern of the faculty, with all their tenderness about bleeding, have no patent for longevity any more than ourselves; and we may set off their drugs against our specifics.”

We went on working double tides; and did so much execution, that in less than six weeks we made as many widows and orphans as the siege of Troy.

The plague must have got into Valladolid by the number of funerals. Day after day came some father or other to know what was become of his son, who was last seen in our hands;

Marcos,’ interrupted Mergelina, ‘I am not like the rest of my sex; or, rather, spite of your long experience, your penetration is but shallow if you fancy merit to have much share in our choice. Judging by myself, we all leap before we look.

Love is a mental derangement, forcibly drawing all our views and attachments into one vortex⁠—a species of hydrophobia.

Have done then with your hints that Diego is not worthy of my tenderness; that he has it is enough to invest him with a thousand perfections too ethereal for your gross sight, and perhaps too unsubstantial for any but a lover’s perception.

Long have I trodden the stage of life in masquerade; and I may call myself doubly happy, in the spiritual rewards of virtue, and the temporal indulgences of the opposite side. Between ourselves, mine is the system of all mankind in the long run.

Real virtue is a very expensive article: plated goods look just as well, and are within the reach of all purchasers.

“ ‘ “Put yourself under my direction. We will make Doctor Oloroso pay the piper to our dancing, or I am no duenna. By my troth, he shall go the way of Señor Apuntador and all mankind.

“Sir,” said he, again, “you know that the Spaniards are proverbially indolent; yet, whatever may be their general dislike to labor, I may compliment myself on bettering the example.

I have a stock of laziness, which disqualifies me for all exertion.

If I had a mind to puff my vices into virtues, I might call this sloth of mine a philosophical indifference, the work of a mind weaned from all that worldlings court with so much ardor;

“You are a very great bore,” resumed the young nobleman, rather peevishly; “this brutal importunity is downright murder to one’s feelings.

I hate loud music; be so good as to let me be ruined pianissimo.

I tell you I want two hundred pistoles, and I must have them.”

I do not know why you should all be lumped together for a set of bloodsuckers; you seem to me a necessary link in the chain of well-ordered society.

You are as good as a physician to us pecuniary invalids of quality, and keep us alive by artificial restoratives in the last stage of a consumptive purse.

”

The fear of talking absurdly prevents you from throwing out at all; and yet it is only by a told push, that a thousand people nowadays set themselves up for good companions.

Do you wish to be bright? You have only to give the reins to your loquacity, and to venture indiscriminately on whatever comes uppermost: your blunders will pass for the eccentricities of genius.

Though you should utter a hundred extravagances, let but a single good joke be packed up in the bundle, the nonsense shall be all forgotten, the witticism bandied about, and your talent be puffed into high repute.

He received me with a gracious air, and enquired how I was reconciled to the habits and manners of the young nobility. I answered, that they were strange to me as yet, but that use and good example might work wonders in the end.

Use and good example did work wonders, and that right soon.

My temper and conduct were quite altered. From a discreet, sober lad, I got to be a lively, heedless merry-andrew.

Yet this enlightened audience persisted in giving the preference to their favorite, and hooted the countryman off the boards; who, producing the pig before he went, said, ‘

Gentlemen, you are not hissing me, but the original pig. So much for your judgment.

’ ”

He called the servants together, ordered them to follow him, and we went all together, to Saint Jerome’s meadow. Don Matthias was taken up alive, but he died three hours after he was brought home.

Thus ended the life of Señor Don Matthias de Silva, only for having taken a fancy to reading supposititious love-letters unseasonably.

He repeated the army list from beginning to end, with copious digressions on the exploits of those officers who had distinguished themselves in his time. O, my poor tympanum! It was almost cracked before we got to the end.

Time, however, will wear out even an old man’s story, and he went to bed.

I immediately went to my own little chamber, whence there was a way into the garden by a private staircase. I depended on my purchase of perfumery for overcoming the effluvia of the day’s drudgery, and put on a clean shirt highly scented.

But death, fearing, no doubt, lest this reserve of purgatives should turn the fortunes of the day, got the start of the concoction, and secured his victory over my master by a coup-de-main.

Such was the final close of Señor Don Vincent, who lost his life because his physician did not know Greek.

Aurora, having buried her father with a pomp suited to the dignity of his birth, administered to his effects.

With all his imperfections he is a great character—a man of superior genius. He is as staunch as a hound at a philosophical dispute, and his words flow like a gutter after a hailstorm.

He has but three foibles in which he indulges: intoxication, litigation, and fornication.

He is now returning from supper at his Isabella’s, whence, the more is the pity, the drunk was leading the drunk, and they both fell into the kennel. Before the good licentiate came to the headship this happened continually.

intoxication, litigation, and fornication. He is now returning from supper at his Isabella’s, whence, the more is the pity, the drunk was leading the drunk, and they both fell into the kennel. Before the good licentiate came to the headship this happened continually.

Though manners make the man, honors, you perceive, do not always mend the manners.

” We left these drunkards in custody of the patrol, who carried them safe home, and betook ourselves to our lodging and our beds.

In short, my praises ran so high, that I began to think worse of myself than I had ever done in the whole course of my life. Their motive was sufficiently obvious; but I was determined to play at diamond cut diamond.

The simper of a simpleton is no bad countermine to the attack of a sharper.

These ladies under favor were of the latter description, and they soon began to open their batteries.

though he had a thousand estimable qualities, my heart was untouched by all his merit.

Love is not always the offspring either of assiduity or desert.

Alas! we are often captivated at first sight by we know not whom, nor why, nor how. To love, then, was not in my power.

though he had a thousand estimable qualities, my heart was untouched by all his merit. Love is not always the offspring either of assiduity or desert.

Alas! we are often captivated at first sight by we know not whom, nor why, nor how.

To love, then, was not in my power.

Not but, with all our forecast, a certain mechanical concatenation of second causes sometimes frustrates our best concerted projects, and drags our philosophy through the mire.

But a ducking now and then only makes us swim the better.

The seasons must all be taken in their turns: the blanks as well as the prizes must be drawn in the cheating lottery of life.”

and though robbery may be considered as containing some little spice of injustice, the necessity we labor under of committing it restores its equilibrium to the scale. Even join your fortune with ours: you will lead a life of hazard, but of variety.

Our predatory peregrinations have every pastoral beauty except innocence, and the want of that is more than counterpoised by subtlety and stratagem.

Not but, with all our forecast, a certain mechanical concatenation of second causes sometimes frustrates our best concerted projects, and drags our philosophy through the mire. But a ducking now and then only makes us swim the better.

“I made my entrance on the stage of life at Madrid, where my mother was an actress, famous for her dramatic, and infamous for her intriguing talents. Her name was Lucinda.

As for my father, every man must have one; but my arithmetic is too scanty to determine the number of mine.

It might indeed be a matter of history, that such or such a man of fashion was dangling after my mother at the epoch of my arrival in this system;

“

There is nothing like taking scandal by the beard, and treating the opinion of the world with heroic indifference.

Lucinda, instead of cooping me up in a garret at home, made no scruple about owning her little bastard, but took me in her hand to the theatre with a modest assurance, regardless how the tongue of rumor might babble at her expense, or how …

Remorse for his delinquencies was to be excited only by sympathy; so that whenever it became necessary to make a bloody example, my seat of vengeance was firked most unmercifully.

The running account between young Leganéz and me was all on one side, and scarcely a day passed but he sinned on tick and suffered by attorney.

By the nearest calculation of whole numbers, there went somewhere about a hundred cuts to teach him each single letter of the alphabet;

“ ‘So much the better,’ said the good burgess: ‘I value him the more for his independence.

Running in debt is a mean thing; it ought to be ratsbane to him and everybody else.

Your people of quality, to be sure, may plead prescription in their favor; there is a sort of privileged swindling, not incompatible with high honor, in high life. If tradesmen were to be paid, they would be too nearly on a level with their employers.

These trumpery fine ladies held themselves up for something far above the common run. “Well-a-day!” said I, to myself, “every now and then, when they forgot the blue bag: this is the way of the world!

Everyone fancies himself to be something vastly superior to his neighbor.

I thought we actresses only did not know our places; women at the lower end of private life, as far as I see, are just as absurd in their pretensions.

I have seen out forty years in the world, and sixty in this solitude. But mark!

At this eternal crisis, the time I have devoted to my pleasures seems an age, and that, on the contrary, which has been sacred to repentance, but a minute!

Alas! I fear lest the austerities of brother Juan should be found light in the balance with the sins of the licentiate Don Juan de Solis.’

In spite of all this, I espied the man of quality in his deportment, doubtless, because I knew that he actually happened to be one.

We common fellows, the fungous growth of the human dunghill, look up to great lords with a facility of being overawed, which often furnishes them with a Benjamin’s mess of importance when nature has denied even the most scanty and trivial gifts.

The archbishop moved towards me in a minuet step, and kindly inquired what I wanted. I told him I was the young man about whom Señor Don Ferdinand de Leyva had spoken to him.

That very, evening, at supper, I took a leaf out of their book, and arrayed myself in the convenient vesture of a wise and prudent outside.

A clothing of humility and sanctification costs nothing.

Indeed it offers such a premium to the wearer, that we are not to wonder if this world abounds in a description of people called hypocrites.

in short, the mercies of heaven are infinite, however heinous our transgressions. Bring that licentiate before me; I take off his suspension.”

Thus it is that men of the most austere character descend from their altitudes when interest or a favorite whim reduces them to the level of the frail.

The archbishop granted, without a struggle, to the empty vanity of having his works well copied, what he had refused to the most respectable applications. I carried the news with all possible expedition to the steward, who communicated it to his friend Garcias.

He folded me repeatedly within his sincere embrace, and I was compelled to stand the brunt of a long-winded compliment on the unparalleled disinterestedness of my conduct towards him.

Gratitude is a fine virtue; and yet it is wearisome when carried beyond due bounds.

He took his seat next me, saying, “Well! a parson must not swear; though, by the mass, my dear patron, since my good fortune has thrown me in your way, we will not part without a jovial glass.

On the other hand, I had been too well brought up to fall into those courses, into which too many poor young women are betrayed for the sake of a scandalous subsistence. There was but one thing remaining for me to determine on.

I turned actress to preserve my morals.

”

but neither time nor place admitting of any very copious indulgence in the privilege of asking questions, we adjourned till the following day, with a promise of renewing our mutual inquiries thick and threefold, under the shelter of her friendly roof.

The pleasure of talking is the inextinguishable passion of woman, coeval with the act of breathing.

I could not get a wink of sleep all night for the burning desire of having a grapple with Phenicia, and closing in upon her in the conflict of curiosity.

It is a sphere of life which holds a middle rank between the nobility and mere tradespeople; a profession exempted from all troublesome restraint, and raised far above the common prejudices of humble and decent society.

The public are our bankers, and we draw upon them at sight.

We live in a continual round of ecstasy, and spend our money to the full as fast as we earn it.

The wine we are drinking with our supper is very bad; henceforth it will become excellent.” At the same time he put two drops of his elixir into my bottle, which made my wine more delicious than the choicest vintages of Spain.

The marvellous strikes the imagination; and when once that faculty is enlisted, judgment is turned adrift.

Delighted with so glorious a secret, and persuaded that he must have outdeviled the devil before he could have got at it, I cried out in a paroxysm of admiration, “O reverend father!

“Thus you see,” pursued the captain, “that if I had a hundred lives, they are all pledged, and that I am likely to go back as hungry as I came.”

A brave man in distress is the most touching object in this world.

I exhorted him to stick close, and offered to write his memorials out fair for nothing. I even went so far as to open my purse to him, and to beg it as a favor that he would draw upon me for whatever he wanted.

Though it was not worth the paper it was scrawled upon, it had more success than many better pieces.

Hence concluded I that the public was a silly bird, and would hatch any eggs that were put under it.

That modest discovery, with the consequent madness of incessant composition, alienated my affections from the hospital.

it is all the better for that. Sonnets, odes, in short, all compositions which partake of the sublime, are of course the reverse of the simple and natural; they are enveloped in clouds, and their darkness constitutes their grandeur.

Let the poet only fancy that he understands himself, no matter whether his readers understand him or not.

”

Thus, what was sent down again untouched being his property by culinary common law, he had nothing to do but to pamper up his pet with victuals ready dressed, instead of giving her the trouble of cooking for herself.

The devil will levy his due out of every transaction

, so that the count was very little the better for his paragon of a steward. The unbounded prodigality in our style of setting out a table, even to a surfeiting degree, was a plain hint to me of what was going forward:

I wanted to know why, and asked an old woman who nursed me; but she told me that I must not talk, as the physician had expressly forbidden it.

When we are well, we turn up our noses at the doctors; but when we are sick, we are as much like old women as themselves.

It seemed best therefore to keep silence, though with an inveterate longing to hold converse with my attendant. I was debating the point in my own mind, when there came in two foppish-looking fellows, dressed in the very extreme of fashion.

“It may be supposed, perhaps, that after this, Don Valerio, baffled, made good his retreat, like a prudent general. Quite the reverse! He became more troublesome than ever.

Love is to lovers just what wine is to drunkards.

The swain entreated, sighed, looked, and sighed again, when all at once, changing his note from childish treble to the big, manly voice of bluster and ravishment, he swore that he would have by foul means what he could not obtain by fair.

and there are other reasons why I set my face against him. He has found out the secret of making himself agreeable to the king, who wants him for his interior cabinet; and back stairs influence is what I cannot bear.

Royal favor is a sort of political mistress; exclusive possession is its only charm.

The very existence of the passion is identified with inextinguishable jealousy; nor can we the better endure to share the bliss, because our rival has been nursed in our own bosom.

There was but one thing kept back. I did not mention Scipio’s name, but took credit to myself for the discovery of Catalina.

One makes a merit of any dirty work in the service of the great.

Abundant were the compliments paid me on this occasion. “My good friend Gil Blas,” said the minister with a bantering air, “I am delighted that, with all your talents, you have that besides of discovering kindhearted beauties;

Alas! poor understrappers, I never thought of asking whether you had sunk or were swimming in the Asturias. A thought about you never came into my head.

The court has all the soporific virtues of Lethe in the case of poor relations.

My family was completely obliterated from the tablets of my memory, when one morning a young man knocked at my door, and begged to speak with me for a moment in private.

All this happened as it was foretold. I was introduced at the goldsmith’s, who received me with the familiarity of an old acquaintance.

A vulgar dog, but warm; and as troublesome with his civility as a prude with her virtue.

He presented me to Señora Eugenia his wife, and the youthful Gabriela his daughter. I opened wide my budget of compliments, without infringing the treaty, and prattled soft nothings to them, in all the vacuity of courtly dialogue.

“

If love is a Spanish passion, revenge is the Spanish lunacy.

Such a note as this was not to be read with composure. At the mere subscription of Don Austin, there kindled in my veins a fire which almost made me forget the claims of hospitality.

She threw herself into the arms of Combados in a pet, not listening to the secret whispers of love within her breast, nor suspecting a story which ought to have seemed so improbable in the annals of true passion.

The haughty are always the victims of their own rash conclusions.

Resentment of insulted beauty triumphed wholly over the suggestions of tenderness. And yet, a few days after marriage, there came over her some feelings of remorse for her precipitation; it struck her that the letter might have been a forgery;

that the Duke of Lerma, chagrined at his nephew’s banishment, would move heaven and earth for that nobleman’s recall; and it might not be too much to expect that his excellency would not forget me.

What a delicate gypsy is hope!

She wheedled me out of all anxiety about my shattered fortunes, and made me as lighthearted as if I had good reason to be so. My prison looked not like the dungeon of perpetual misery, but like the vestibule to a more distinguished station.

At all events, you may risk it; though I would not lay the postage of your letter on its success. The minister loves you, it is true; but then political love lacks memory as much as personal love lacks visual discrimination. ‘

Out of sight, out of mind!

’ is at once the motto and the stigma of these gentry.”

and, if they are no more, I charge you to lay out the money in masses for the repose of their souls and of mine.” Then did I stretch out my hand, which he bathed in silent tears.

It is not always true that the mourning of an heir is mirth in masquerade.

For some hours I fancied myself outward-bound, and on the point of sailing; but the wind changed. My pilots having quitted the helm, and left the vessel to the steerage of nature, the danger of shipwreck disappeared.

Then, for the economy of our table, the simplest will be the cheapest, and of course the best. Unadulterated Ceres shall be our official caterer; when hunger shall have tamed our fastidious appetites into sobriety, a mumbled crust will relish like an ortolan.

The supreme delight of eating is not in the thing ate, but in the palate of him who eats

—a proposition in culinary philosophy proved by the frequent loathing of my own stomach, through a long series of ministerial dinners. Abstemiousness is a luxury of the most exquisite refinement, and the best recipe in the materia medica.”

The supreme delight of eating is not in the thing ate, but in the palate of him who eats—a proposition in culinary philosophy proved by the frequent loathing of my own stomach, through a long series of ministerial dinners.

Abstemiousness is a luxury of the most exquisite refinement, and the best recipe in the materia medica.

”

With pleasure will I accept of the estate at Lirias, where my present property will be sufficient for all my wants. Rather than increase my cares with my possessions, I would build a hospital out of my existing funds.

Riches are a burden; and it must be a foolish animal that would bear fardels in the manger or the field.

”

My late illustrious progenitor—heaven forgive him all his sins!—was so warm a partisan of Hippocrates, that he often came to blows with ignorant pretenders, who vomited forth blasphemies against that high priest of the faculty.

What is bred in the bone will not come out of the flesh

: I could willingly inflict tortures and death with my own hands on those rash innovators whose daring enormities you have characterized with such accuracy of discrimination and such force of language.

I paid the first year in advance, and stole out of Oviedo the next morning before dawn, for fear of vying with Saint Stephen in popular favor. Such were the charms of my return to my native place.

An admirable lesson this, for those successful upstarts, who, having gone abroad to make their fortunes, come home to be the purse-proud tyrants of their birthplace.

I am willing to believe with you, that he has taken the vow with the pious intention of keeping it; but the blaze of gold may be too much for the weakness of his regenerated eyesight.

It is bad policy to lock up a reformed drunkard in a wine cellar.

”

But how to accomplish it! Is there no way of bringing these choice morsels to a better test than that of smell? And why not?

Hunger, they say, will break through stone walls.

On this idea did I set my wits to work;

accordingly she gave me all possible credit for the diligent execution of my office, while my discontent swelled high against her for fobbing me off with the cold recompense of approbation.

The good lady was so abominably avaricious as not to give me a working partner’s share in the profits of my industry, nor to allow for the wear and tear of my conscience.

She seemed inclined to consider, that, by paying me my wages, all the requisitions of Christian charity were made good between us.

It is alleged that Spain will be no loser by the exchange, and that the present premier is possessed of a genius so extensive, a mind so capacious, that he would be competent to wield the machine of universal government.

New brooms, they say, sweep clean!

But, at all events, you may take this for certain, that the public is fully impressed with a very favorable opinion of his capacity; we shall see by and by whether the Duke of Lerma’s situation is well or ill filled up.”

Just as the prince was uttering these words, the Count of Olivarez came into the closet.

The nerves of favorites are shaken by every breath, their irritability excited by every trifle

: he was as much astonished as any favorite need be at the sight of a stranger in that place, and the king redoubled his wondering propensities by the following recommendation: “Count, I consign this young man to your care;

he is capricious in conduct and visionary in design. Here you have the picture of his mind, the light and shade of his intellectual merits: the qualities of his heart and disposition remain to be delineated. He is generous and warm in his friendships.

It is said that he is revengeful; but would he be a Spaniard if he were otherwise?

In addition to this, he has been accused of ingratitude, for having driven the Duke of Uzeda and Friar Lewis Aliaga into banishment, though he owed them, according to common report, obligations of the most binding nature;

To own the truth, though my professions were in the spirit of Christian charity towards that nobleman, I was not sorry to give him a sly rub in the exercise of my function.

O man! man! what a compound of candor-breathing satire and splenetic impartiality art thou!

Towards the conclusion, having finished my frightful portraiture of overhanging evils, I endeavored to allay the storm my art had raised, by making futurity as bright as the past had been gloomy.

I should be sorry to write down to their comprehension. You are not to suppose that this is the language of disgust; it is my sincere and well-weighed opinion. Applause and hisses are just the same to me.

It is a toss up who fails and who succeeds: the wit of today is the blockhead of tomorrow.

What cursed fools our dramatists must be, to care for anything but their poundage when their plays happen to be received! It is all very well for a few nights!

I told him that I wished it all possible success, and thought so favorably of his genius as to entertain considerable hopes. “So do I,” said he; “but hope never tells a more flattering tale than in the ear of a dramatic author.

You might as well attempt to fix the wind by nailing the weathercock as speculate on the reception of a new piece with an audience.

”