Sheridan : Richard Brinsley (Butler) (1751-1816), British playwright & politician noted for his comedies of manners, especially The School for Scandal.
... " 14 (9) From R.B. Sheridan: During the trial of Warren Hastings, Sheridan, who was an M.P., was making one of his speeches when, having observed Gibbon among the audience, he took occasion to refer to "the luminous author of the 'Decline and Fall'." A friend afterwards reproached him for flattering the historian. "Why, what did I say of him?" asked Sheridan. "You called him the... will spoil the whole effect. It is not without reason that Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the great Irish wit of the eighteenth century, once wittily remarked about a gentleman: "I can laugh at his malice - but not at his wit." The story is told that one Lord Lauderdale, after having heard an excellent joke, one day came to Sheridan and proposed repeating the same to the latter on which the master wit stopped... matter." The acknowledged masters of this literary form, however, fall broadly into two different categories, some with a carefully rehearsed wit and the others with a spontaneously produced one. Sheridan himself generally belonged to the first type while Sydney Smith, whom Walter Savage Landor described as "humour's pink primate", belonged to the second one. Their attitudes towards the quality of ...
... is thought you have to dilute it very much and throw it into the emotional vital. Disciple : But they say that Surendra Nath was Burke and Sheridan combined in his oratorical powers. Sri Aurobindo : He may be like Sheridan. I do not know. Sheridan was a great orator, he never had to think for making a speech. But he was not like Burke. Burke is thought, every sentence of his is weighed with ...
... Commons a noisy member who had got into the habit of interrupting every speaker with cries of "Hear! Hear!". The celebrated Sheridan, a M.P. himself, thought of trapping this member into an embarrassing discomfiture. One day while rising to speak in the Parliament Sheridan Page 58 took an opportunity to allude to a well-known political character of the time, whom he represented as... the Henry Clay cigar, the Stonewall Jackson cigar. Hence 'turning into cigar' becomes synonymous with obtaining immortality!" 82 12. Amusingly overstretched implication: Example 1: Sheridan, an Irish M.P., has this dig at the parliamentary practice of amending a bill: "First comes in a bill, imposing a tax, and then comes in a bill to amend that bill for imposing a tax; next a bill... Expression apparently absurd but, rightly understood, turns out to be quite correct: Example: A gentleman having a remarkably long visage was one day riding by a school when he heard young Sheridan say: "That gentleman's face is longer than his life." Struck by the strangeness of the remark, the passer-by turned his horse, and asked the boy what he meant by his phrase. "Sir," replied the ...
... large share of the future. I suppose some of his plays will survive for their wit and humour and cleverness more than for any higher dramatic quality, like those of three other Irishmen: Goldsmith, Sheridan, Wilde. His prefaces may be saved by their style and force, but it is not sure. At any rate, as a personality he is not likely to be forgotten, even if his writings fade. To compare him with Anatole ...
... eighteenth-century England. He laid down the law in matters of literature and in all other matters brought up by his circle of eminent friends — Reynolds the painter, Burke the politician-orator, Sheridan the playwright, Garrick the actor, Goldsmith the poet, Boswell the future immortal writer of his friend's biography and the biggest fool of the company with the exception of Goldsmith who, Garrick ...
... large share of the future. I suppose some of his plays will survive for their wit and humour and cleverness more than for any higher dramatic quality, like those of three other Irishmen, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Wilde. His prefaces may be saved by their style and force, but it is not sure. At any rate, as a personality he is not likely to be forgotten, even if his writings fade. To compare him with [Anatole] ...
... d by the British. The directors of the Company met and sent him a letter of rebuke and censure. Humiliated by this Hastings resigned. On his return to England he was impeached. Edmund Burke, Fox, Sheridan, all well-known Englishmen of the time, Page 96 spoke against Hastings. There was a debate in the Hoi Lords in which Edmund Burke spoke continuously for three days using his fiery eloquence ...
... spite of oneself. Thus when a person doesn't like another, he doesn't always know the reason, but it means that the vital beings of the two don't agree; the interchanges are unpleasant. You know Sheridan's lines: I do not like thee. Doctor Fell. The reason why I cannot tell. But at times, even when there is incompatibility, people come together. You see men and women quarrelling violently and ...
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