William Congreve Quotes - Page 2

O fie, miss, you must not kiss and tell.

Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast...

You are a woman: you must never speak what you think; your words must contradict your thoughts, but your actions may contradict your words.

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

I confess freely to you, I could never look long upon a monkey, without very mortifying reflections.

There is in true Beauty, as in Courage, somewhat which narrow Souls cannot dare to admire.

Whoever is king, is also the father of his country.

A wit should no more be sincere, than a woman constant; one argues a decay of parts, as to other of beauty.

How hard a thing 'twould be to please you all.

Music has charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak. I've read that things inanimate have moved, and, as with living souls, have been inform'd, by magic numbers and persuasive sound.

A little scorn is alluring.

Music alone with sudden charms can bind The wand'ring sense, and calm the troubled mind.

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.

If there's delight in love, 'Tis when I see that heart, which others bleed for, bleed for me.

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.

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

I always take blushing either for a sign of guilt, or of ill breeding.

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.

If this be not love, it is madness, and then it is pardonable.

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

I am a fool, I know it; and yet, Heaven help me, I'm poor enough to be a wit.

Love's but a frailty of the mind, When 'tis not with ambition joined.

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.

If happiness in self-content is placed, The wise are wretched, and fools only blessed.

Though marriage makes man and wife one flesh, it leaves 'em still two fools.