William Congreve Quotations | Page 2

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

Beauty is the lover's gift.

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

Mr Witwould: "Pray, madam, do you pin up your hair with all your letters? I find I must keep copies." Mrs Millamant: "Only with those in verse.... I never pin up my hair with prose."

O, she is the antidote to desire.

A little scorn is alluring.

Thus in this sad, but oh, too pleasing state! my soul can fix upon nothing but thee; thee it contemplates, admires, adores, nay depends on, trusts on you alone.

Nothing but you can lay hold of my mind, and that can lay hold of nothing but you.

Delay not till tomorrow to be wise; tomorrow's sun to thee may neve rise.

I am always of the opinion with the learned, if they speak first.

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.

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

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.

Marriage is honourable, as you say; and if so, wherefore should Cuckoldom be a Discredit, being deriv'd from so honourable a Root?

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.

There is nothing more unbecoming a man of quality than to laugh ... 'tis such a vulgar expression of the passion!

Blessings ever wait on virtuous deeds, and though a late, a sure reward succeeds.

Musick has charms to soothe a savage breast

Women like flames have a destroying power; never to be quenched till they themselves devour.

Words are the weak support of cold indifference; love has no language to be heard.

Marriage indeed may qualify the fury of his passion, but it very rarely mends a man's manners.

Guilt is ever at a loss, and confusion waits upon it; when innocence and bold truth are always ready for expression.

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

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.

A woman only obliges a man to secrecy, that she may have the pleasure of telling herself.