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William Congreve Quotes
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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
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Marriage indeed may qualify the fury of his passion, but it very rarely mends a man's manners.
William Congreve
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Baboons and apes ridiculous we find; For what? For ill resembling Human-kind.
William Congreve
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Guilt is ever at a loss, and confusion waits upon it; when innocence and bold truth are always ready for expression.
William Congreve
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Marriage is honourable, as you say; and if so, wherefore should Cuckoldom be a Discredit, being deriv'd from so honourable a Root?
William Congreve
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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.
William Congreve
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A woman only obliges a man to secrecy, that she may have the pleasure of telling herself.
William Congreve
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One minute gives invention to destroy; What to rebuild, will a whole age employ.
William Congreve
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Words are the weak support of cold indifference; love has no language to be heard.
William Congreve
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Music alone with sudden charms can bind
The wand'ring sense, and calm the troubled mind.
William Congreve
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Would any thing but a madman complain of uncertainty? Uncertainty and expectation are joys of life; security is an insipid thing; and the overtaking and possessing of a wish discovers the folly of the chase.
William Congreve
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Don't let us be familiar or fond, nor kiss before folks, like my Lady Fadler and Sir Francis…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.
William Congreve
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Defer not till tomorrow to be wise,
Tomorrow's sun to thee may never rise.
William Congreve
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Retired to their tea and scandal, according to their ancient custom.
William Congreve
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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.
William Congreve
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I came up stairs into the world, for I was born in a cellar.
William Congreve
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There is in true beauty, as in courage, somewhat which narrow souls cannot dare to admire.
William Congreve
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Sharper:
Thus grief still treads upon the heels of pleasure:
Married in haste, we may repent at leisure.
Setter:
Some by experience find those words mis-placed:
At leisure married, they repent in haste.
William Congreve
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Ah! Whither, whither shall I fly,
A poor unhappy Maid;
To hopeless Love and Misery
By my own Heart betray'd?
William Congreve
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Ferdinand Mendez Pinto was but a type of thee, thou liar of the first magnitude.
William Congreve
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Quote of the day
Now if the harvest is over, And the world cold, Give me the bonus of laughter, As I lose hold.
John Betjeman
William Congreve
Creative Commons
Born:
January 24, 1670
Died:
January 19, 1729
(aged 58)
Bio:
William Congreve was an English playwright and poet.
Known for:
The Way of the World (1700)
Love for Love (1695)
The Double Dealer (1694)
Most used words:
love
married
bred
truth
fools
man
born
find
charms
dull
William Congreve on Wikipedia
William Congreve works on Gutenberg Project
William Congreve works on Wikisource
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