William Congreve Quotes

76 Sourced Quotes

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

William Congreve
Aye, 'tis well enough for a servant to be bred at an University. But the education is a little too pedantic for a gentleman.

William Congreve
If there's delight in love, 'tis when I see
That heart which others bleed for, bleed for me.

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

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

William Congreve
Heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turned,
Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorned.

William Congreve
Invention flags, his brain goes muddy,
And black despair succeeds brown study.

William Congreve
I warrant you, if he danced till doomsday, he thought I was to pay the piper.

William Congreve
No mask like open truth to cover lies,
As to go naked is the best disguise.

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

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

William Congreve
All well bred persons lie – Besides, you are a woman; you must never speak what you think…

William Congreve
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.

William Congreve
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.

William Congreve
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.

William Congreve
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.

William Congreve
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.

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

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

William Congreve
Women are like tricks by sleight of hand,
Which, to admire, we should not understand.

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

William Congreve
O ay, letters - I had letters - I am persecuted with letters - I hate letters - 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.

William Congreve
Thou art a retailer of phrases, and dost deal in remnants of remnants, like a maker of pincushions; thou art in truth (metaphorically speaking) a speaker of shorthand.

William Congreve
Now will I, in my old way, discover the whole and real truth of the matter to him, that he may not suspect one word on't.

William Congreve
Has he not a rogue's face?…a hanging-look to me…has a damned Tyburn-face, without the benefit o' the Clergy.

William Congreve
Though marriage makes man and wife one flesh, it leaves 'em still two fools.

William Congreve
If this be not love, it is madness, and then it is pardonable.

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

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

William Congreve
There is nothing more unbecoming a man of quality than to laugh; Jesu, 'tis such a vulgar expression of the passion!

William Congreve