William Wycherley Quotes

20 Sourced Quotes

Good fellowship and friendship are lasting, rational and manly pleasures.

William Wycherley
A mistress should be like a little country retreat near the town, not to dwell in constantly, but only for a night and away.

William Wycherley
Women of quality are so civil, you can hardly distinguish love from good breeding.

William Wycherley
A beauty masked, like the sun in eclipse, gathers together more gazers than if it shined out.

William Wycherley
A quack is as fit for a pimp as a midwife for a bawd: they are still but in their way, both helpers of nature.

William Wycherley
I have heard people eat most heartily of another man's meat, that is, what they do not pay for.

William Wycherley
Mistresses are like books; if you pore upon them too much, they doze you and make you unfit for company; but if used discreetly, you are the fitter for conversation by em.

William Wycherley
Charity and good-nature give a sanction to the most common actions; and pride and ill-nature make our best virtues despicable.

William Wycherley
I love to be envied, and would not marry a wife that I alone could love; loving alone is as dull as eating alone.

William Wycherley
Grief is so far from retrieving a loss that it makes it greater; but the way to lessen it is by a comparison with others' losses.

William Wycherley
As wit is too hard for power in council, so power is too hard for wit in action.

William Wycherley
Come, for my part I will have only those glorious, manly pleasures of being very drunk, and very slovenly.

William Wycherley
Go to your business, I say, pleasure, whilst I go to my pleasure, business.

William Wycherley
Hunger, revenge, to sleep are petty foes, But only death the jealous eyes can close.

William Wycherley
You who scribble, yet hate all who write…
And with faint praises one another damn.
Of drama critics

William Wycherley
I weigh the man, not his title; 't is not the king's stamp can make the metal better.

William Wycherley
Your women of honor, as you call em, are only chary of their reputations, not their persons; and 'Tis scandal that they would avoid, not men.

William Wycherley
Marrying to increase love is like gaming to become rich; alas, you only lose what little stock you had before.

William Wycherley
A man without money needs no more fear a crowd of lawyers than a crowd of pickpockets.

William Wycherley
'Tis my maxim, he's a fool that marries, but he's a greater that does not marry a fool.

William Wycherley