William Congreve Quotes

A little disdain is not amiss; a little scorn is alluring.

Let us be very strange and well-bred:Let us be as strange as if we had been married a great while;And as well-bred as if we were not married at all.

Marriage is honourable, as you say; and if so, wherefore should Cuckoldom be a Discredit, being deriv'd from so honourable a Root?

A woman only obliges a man to secrecy, that she may have the pleasure of telling herself.

Thus in this sad, but oh, too pleasing state! my soul can fix upon nothing but thee; thee it contemplates, admires, adores, nay depends on, trusts on you alone.

Music hath charms to sooth a savage breast.

He that first cries out stop thief, is often he that has stolen the treasure.

If there's delight in love, 'Tis when I see that heart, which others bleed for, bleed for me.

Guilt is ever at a loss, and confusion waits upon it; when innocence and bold truth are always ready for expression.

To find a young fellow that is neither a wit in his own eye, nor a fool in the eye of the world, is a very hard task.

Courtship is to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull play.
(quoted in Life After Life)

Beauty is the lover's gift.

You are a woman: you must never speak what you think; your words must contradict your thoughts, but your actions may contradict your words.

He who closes his ears to the views of others shows little confidence in the integrity of his own views.

Of those few fools, who with ill stars are curst,
Sure scribbling fools, called poets, fare the worst:
For they're a sort of fools which fortune makes,
And, after she has made them fools, forsakes.
With Nature's oafs 'tis quite a different case,
For Fortune favours all her idiot race.
In her own nest the cuckoo eggs we find,
Over which she broods to hatch the changeling kind:
No portion for her own she has to spare,
So much she dotes on her adopted care.
Poets are bubbles, by the town drawn in,
Suffered at first some trifling stakes to win:
But what unequal hazards do they run!
Each time they write they venture all they've won:
The Squire that's buttered still, is sure to be undone.
This author, heretofore, has found your favour,
But pleads no merit from his past behaviour.
To build on that might prove a vain presumption,
Should grant to poets made admit resumption,
And in Parnassus he must lose his seat,
If that be found a forfeited estate.

I hope you do not think me prone to any iteration of nuptials.

Nothing but you can lay hold of my mind, and that can lay hold of nothing but you.

A wit should no more be sincere, than a woman constant; one argues a decay of parts, as to other of beauty.

Heav'n hath no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd.

I always take blushing either for a sign of guilt, or of ill breeding.

I confess freely to you, I could never look long upon a monkey, without very mortifying reflections.

Music alone with sudden charms can bind The wand'ring sense, and calm the troubled mind.

Love's but the frailty of the mind, When 'tis not with ambition joined; A sickly flame, which if not fed expires; And feeding, wastes in self-consuming fires.

O, nothing is more alluring than a levee from a couch in some confusion.

Invention flags, his brain goes muddy, and black despair succeeds brown study.

I know a lady that loves to talk so incessantly, she won't give an echo fair play; she has that everlasting rotation of tongue that an echo must wait till she dies before it can catch her last words!

Come, come, leave business to idlers, and wisdom to fools: they have need of 'em: wit be my faculty, and pleasure my occupation, and let father Time shake his glass.

You'll grow devilish fat upon this paper-diet!

If happiness in self-content is placed, The wise are wretched, and fools only blessed.

For blessings ever wait on virtuous deeds, And though late, a sure reward succeeds.

But say what you will, 'tis better to be left than never to have been loved. To pass our youth in dull indifference, to refuse the sweets of life because they once must leave us, is as preposterous as to wish to have been born old, because we one day must be old.

A wit should be no more sincere than a woman constant.

Hannibal was a very pretty fellow in those days.

Honor is a public enemy, and conscience a domestic, and he that would secure his pleasure, must pay a tribute to one and go halves with t'other.

Some by experience find those words mis-placed: At leisure married, they repent in haste.

A little scorn is alluring.

One minute gives invention to destroy; What to rebuild, will a whole age employ.

Turn pimp, flatterer, quack, lawyer, parson, be chaplain to an atheist, or stallion to an old woman, anything but a poet; for a poet is worse, more servile, timorous and fawning than any I have named.

'Tis well enough for a servant to be bred at an University. But the education is a little too pedantic for a gentleman.

Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life. Security is an insipid thing.

I am a fool, I know it; and yet, Heaven help me, I'm poor enough to be a wit.

To converse with Scandal is to play at Losing Loadum, you must lose a good name to him, before you can win it for yourself.

There are times when sense may be unseasonable, as well as truth.

There is nothing more unbecoming a man of quality than to laugh ... 'tis such a vulgar expression of the passion!

In my conscience I believe the baggage loves me, for she never speaks well of me herself, nor suffers any body else to rail at me.

Defer not till to-morrow to be wise, To-morrow's Sun to thee may never rise; Or should to-morrow chance to cheer thy sight With her enlivening and unlook'd for light, How grateful will appear her dawning rays! As favours unexpected doubly please.

I find we are growing serious, and then we are in great danger of being dull.

Whoever is king, is also the father of his country.

Women like flames have a destroying power; never to be quenched till they themselves devour.

They come together like the Coroner's Inquest, to sit upon the murdered reputations of the week.

Musick has charms to soothe a savage breast

Say what you will, 'tis better to be left than never to have been loved.

It is the business of a comic poet to paint the vices and follies of human kind.

Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.

There are come Critics so with Spleen diseased, They scarcely come inclining to be pleased: And sure he must have more than mortal Skill, Who please one against his Will.

Music has charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak. I've read that things inanimate have moved, and, as with living souls, have been inform'd, by magic numbers and persuasive sound.

They are at the end of the gallery; retired to their tea and scandal, according to their ancient custom.

A hungry wolf at all the herd will run, In hopes, through many, to make sure of one.

She once used me with that insolence, that in revenge I took her to pieces; sifted her, and separated her failings; I studied 'em, and got 'em by rote. The catalogue was so large, that I was not without hopes, one day or other to hate her heartily.