Daily Inspiration Quote by Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Sheridan’s line is a needle slipped between the ribs of a certain type of talker: the man who performs intelligence by telling stories. “Indebted” is doing quiet work here. It suggests not just dependence but a kind of moral liability, as if the speaker’s humor and knowledge are loans he can’t repay because neither is truly his. The sentence is balanced like a couplet, but the symmetry is a trap: memory and imagination get swapped into roles they don’t traditionally hold. Memory supplies “jests” (recycled quips, borrowed sparkle), while imagination supplies “facts” (made-up certainty delivered with a straight face). The joke lands because the inversion feels instantly recognizable.

As a playwright steeped in Restoration and late-18th-century comedy of manners, Sheridan is targeting social performance: wit as currency, facts as props. His theater is crowded with characters who survive by talking faster than reality can catch them. The subtext is less “this person lies” than “this person has learned that lying, confidently and entertainingly, functions as truth in polite company.” If your audience rewards the punchline and doesn’t penalize the fabrication, imagination becomes a reliable source.

It’s also a sly jab at the era’s self-styled men of reason. Enlightenment culture prized “facts,” but Sheridan reminds you how easily facts become theater when they’re mediated by ego and charm. The line works because it flatters the listener’s discernment while exposing the social machinery that makes discernment optional.