William Congreve Quotes

Would I were free from this restraint, Or else had hopes to win her; Would she could make of me a saint, Or I of her a sinner.

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

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

These articles subscribed, if I continue to endure you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into wife.

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

I confess I have deserted the high place I once held of sighing at your feet.

Marriage is honourable, as you say; and if so, wherefore should cuckoldom be a discredit, being derived from so honourable a root ?

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.

A fellow that lives in a windmill has not a more whimsical dwelling than the heart of a man that is lodged in a woman.

To please a fool is some degree of folly.

Witwoud: Madam, do you pin up your hair with all your letters ? Millamant: Only with those in verse, Mr Witwoud. I never pin up my hair with prose.

Nobody knows how to write letters; and yet one has ’em, one does not know why.—They serve one to pin up one’s hair.

Here she comes i’ faith full sail, with her fan spread and streamers out, and a shoal of fools for tenders.

Beauty is the lover’s gift.

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

To pass over 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 may be old. For my part, my youth may wear and waste, but it shall never rust in my possession.

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

What, he speaks unseasonable truths sometimes, because he has not wit enough to invent an evasion.

A wit should no more be sincere than a woman constant; one argues a decay of parts, as t’other of beauty.