William Congreve
There is in true beauty, as in courage, something which narrow souls cannot dare to admire.Collection: Courage
Courtship is to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull play.Collection: Dating
Beauty is the lover's gift.Collection: Beauty
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.Collection: Business
Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.Collection: Love
Never go to bed angry, stay up and fight.Collection: Anger
Say what you will, 'tis better to be left than never to have been loved.Collection: Love
Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear.Collection: Fear
Music has charms to sooth a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.Collection: Music
A hungry wolf at all the herd will run, In hopes, through many, to make sure of one.
If there's delight in love, 'Tis when I see that heart, which others bleed for, bleed for me.
Wit must be foiled by wit: cut a diamond with a diamond.
They are at the end of the gallery; retired to their tea and scandal, according to their ancient custom.
If this be not love, it is madness, and then it is pardonable.
Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life. Security is an insipid thing.
I confess freely to you, I could never look long upon a monkey, without very mortifying reflections.
Grief walks upon the heels of pleasure; married in haste, we repent at leisure.
You are a woman: you must never speak what you think; your words must contradict your thoughts, but your actions may contradict your words.
A little disdain is not amiss; a little scorn is alluring.
A wit should be no more sincere than a woman constant.
I know that's a secret, for it's whispered everywhere.
I find we are growing serious, and then we are in great danger of being dull.
They come together like the Coroner's Inquest, to sit upon the murdered reputations of the week.
'Tis well enough for a servant to be bred at an University. But the education is a little too pedantic for a gentleman.
Invention flags, his brain goes muddy, and black despair succeeds brown study.
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.
No, I'm no enemy to learning; it hurts not me.
He who closes his ears to the views of others shows little confidence in the integrity of his own views.
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.
She likes herself, yet others hates, For that which in herself she prizes; And while she laughs at them, forgets She is the thing that she despises.
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd.Collection: Hell Hath No Fury
He that first cries out stop thief, is often he that has stolen the treasure.Collection: Honesty
Women are like tricks by sleight of hand, Which, to admire, we should not understandCollection: Hands
No mask like open truth to cover lies, As to go naked is the best disguise.Collection: Honesty
There are times when sense may be unseasonable, as well as truth.Collection: May
Delay not till tomorrow to be wise; tomorrow's sun to thee may neve rise.Collection: Wise
Women like flames have a destroying power; never to be quenched till they themselves devour.Collection: Women
Nothing but you can lay hold of my mind, and that can lay hold of nothing but you.Collection: Mind
Every man plays the fool once in his live, but to marry is playing the fool all one's life long.Collection: Funny
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.Collection: Ambition
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.Collection: Sweet
Thus grief still treads upon the heels of pleasure; Married in haste, we may repent at leisure.Collection: Marriage
It is the business of a comic poet to paint the vices and follies of human kind.Collection: Business
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!Collection: Echoes
O, she is the antidote to desire.Collection: Desire
These articles subscribed, if I continue to endure you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into wife.Collection: Wife
I came up stairs into the world, for I was born in a cellar.Collection: World
If happiness in self-content is placed, The wise are wretched, and fools only blessed.Collection: Wise
Who pleases one against his will.Collection: Pleasure
I hope you do not think me prone to any iteration of nuptials.Collection: Thinking