Aphra Behn Quotes

That perfect tranquillity of life, which is nowhere to be found but in retreat, a faithful friend and a good library.

All I ask, is the privilege for my masculine part the poet in me.... If I must not, because of my sex, have this freedom... I lay down my quill and you shall hear no more of me.

Variety is the soul of pleasure.

Where there is no novelty, there can be no curiosity.

Nothing is more capable of troubling our reason, and consuming our health, than secret notions of jealousy in solitude.

A poet is a painter in his way, he draws to the life, but in another kind; we draw the nobler part, the soul and the mind; the pictures of the pen shall outlast those of the pencil, and even worlds themselves.

Who is't that to woman's beauty would submit, And yet refuse the fetters of their wit?

Each moment of a happy lover's hour is worth an age of dull and common life.

There is no sinner like a young saint.

Money speaks sense in a language all nations understand.

As love is the most noble and divine passion of the soul, so is it that to which we may justly attribute all the real satisfactions of life, and without it, man is unfinished, and unhappy.

Faith, Sir, we are here today and gone tomorrow.

Kings that made laws, first broke 'em.

Love ceases to be a pleasure, when it ceases to be a secret.

Time lessens all extremes and reduces 'em to mediums and unconcern.

One hour of right-down love is worth an age of dully living on.

Jealousy, the old worm that bites.

Love, like reputation, once fled, never returns more.

No friend to Love like a long voyage at sea.

God makes all things good; Man meddles with 'em and they become evil.

... he that will live in this World, must be endu'd with the three rare Qualities of Dissimulation, Equivocation, and mental Reservation.

Love's a thin Diet, nor will keep out Cold.

A brave world, sir, full of religion, knavery, and change: we shall shortly see better days.

Here lies a Proof that Wit can never be Defence enough against Mortality

I think a Play the best divertisement that wise men have: but I do also think them nothing so who do discourse so formallie about the rules of it, as if 'twere the grand affair of humane life.