William Congreve was an English playwright and poet during the Restoration period. He is known for his clever, satirical dialogue and influence on the comedy of manners style of that period. Congreve shaped the English comedy of manners through his use of satire and well-written dialogue. Congreve achieved fame in 1693 when he wrote some of the most popular English plays of the Restoration period. This period was distinguished by the fact that female roles were beginning to be played predominantly by women, and was evident in Congreve’s work.
Some of the best quotes from William Congreve are listed below.
- “A hungry wolf at all the herd will run, in hopes, through many, to make sure of one.” – William Congreve
- “A little scorn is alluring.” – William Congreve
- “A wit should no more be sincere, than a woman constant; one argues a decay of parts, as to other of beauty.” – William Congreve
- “A woman only obliges a man to secrecy, that she may have the pleasure of telling herself.” – William Congreve
- “And black despair succeeds brown study.” – William Congreve
- “Beauty is the lover’s gift.” – William Congreve
- “Blessings ever wait on virtuous deeds, and though a late, a sure reward succeeds.” – William Congreve
- “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.” – William Congreve
- “Come, come, leave the 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.” – William Congreve
- “Courtship is to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull play.” – William Congreve
- “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 favors unexpected doubly please.” – William Congreve
- “Delay not till tomorrow to be wise; tomorrow’s sun to thee may never rise.” – William Congreve
- “Every man plays the fool once in his live, but to marry is playing the fool all one’s life long.” – William Congreve
- “Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether, of our worth or worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear.” – William Congreve
- “Hannibal was a very pretty fellow in those days.” – William Congreve
- “He that first cries out stop thief, is often he that has stolen the treasure.” – William Congreve
- “He who closes his ears to the views of others shows little confidence in the integrity of his own views.” – William Congreve
- “Honor is a public enemy, and conscience a domestic, and he that would secure his pleasure, must pay a tribute to one and go halves with t’other.” – William Congreve
- “How hard a thing ‘would be to please you all.” – William Congreve
- “I always take blushing either for a sign of guilt or of ill-breeding.” – William Congreve
- “I am a fool, I know it; and yet, Heaven help me, I’m poor enough to be a wit.” – William Congreve
- “I am always of the opinion with the learned if they speak first.” – William Congreve
- “I came upstairs into the world, for I was born in a cellar.” – William Congreve
- “I confess freely to you, I could never look long upon a monkey, without very mortifying reflections.” – William Congreve
- “I find we are growing serious, and then we are in great danger of being dull.” – William Congreve
- “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!” – William Congreve Quotes
- “I know that’s a secret, for it’s whispered everywhere.” – William Congreve
- “If happiness in self-content is placed, the wise are wretched, and fools only blessed.” – William Congreve
- “If there’s delight in love, ‘Tis when I see that heart, which others bleed for, bleed for me.” – William Congreve
- “If this be not love, it is madness, and then it is pardonable.” – William Congreve
- “Invention flags, his brain goes muddy.” – William Congreve
- “It is the business of a comic poet to paint the vices and follies of humankind.” – William Congreve
- “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.” – William Congreve
- “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.” – William Congreve
- “Music alone with sudden charms can bind the wandering sense, and calm the troubled mind.” – William Congreve
- “Music has charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks or bend a knotted oak.” – William Congreve
- “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 informed, by magic numbers and persuasive sound.” – William Congreve
- “No mask like open truth to cover lies, as to go naked is the best disguise.” – William Congreve
- “No, I’m no enemy to learning; it hurts not me.” – William Congreve
- “Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorn’d.” – William Congreve
- “Nothing but you can lay hold of my mind, and that can lay hold of nothing but you.” – William Congreve
- “O ay, letters – I had letters – I am persecuted with letters – I hate letters – nobody knows how to write letters; and yet one has ’em, one does not know why – they serve one to pin up one’s hair.” – William Congreve
- “O fie, miss, you must not kiss and tell.” – William Congreve
- “O, she is the antidote to desire.” – William Congreve
- “One minute gives invention to destroy; What to rebuild, will a whole age employ.” – William Congreve
- “Say what you will, ’tis better to be left than never to have been loved.” – William Congreve
- “She likes herself, yet others hate, for that which in herself she prizes; And while she laughs at them, forgets She is the thing that she despises.” – William Congreve Quotes
- “There are times when sense may be unseasonable, as well as truth.” – William Congreve
- “There is in true beauty, as in courage, somewhat which narrow souls cannot dare to admire.” – William Congreve
- “There is nothing more unbecoming a man of quality than to laugh … ’tis such a vulgar expression of the passion!” – William Congreve
- “These articles subscribed, if I continue to endure you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into wife.” – William Congreve
- “Though marriage makes man and wife one flesh, it leaves ’em still two fools.” – William Congreve
- “Thus grief still treads upon the heels of pleasure; Married in haste, we may repent at leisure.” – William Congreve
- “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.” – William Congreve
- “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.” – William Congreve
- “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.” – William Congreve
- “Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life. Security is an insipid thing.” – William Congreve
- “Who pleases one against his will.” – William Congreve
- “Whoever is king, is also the father of his country.” – William Congreve
- “Wit must be foiled by wit: cut a diamond with a diamond.” – William Congreve
- “Women are like tricks by sleight of hand, which, to admire, we should not understand” – William Congreve
- “Women like flames have a destroying power; never to be quenched till they themselves devour.” – William Congreve
- “Words are the weak support of cold indifference; love has no language to be heard.” – William Congreve
- “You are a woman: you must never speak what you think; your words must contradict your thoughts, but your actions may contradict your words.” – William Congreve
