Invention flags, his brain goes muddy, and black despair succeeds brown study.
—William Congreve
Topics: Inspirational, Inspiration
Read, read, search, and refine your appetite; learn to live upon instruction; feast your mind and mortify your flesh.—Read and take your nourishment in all your eyes; shut up your mouth, and chew the cud of understanding.
—William Congreve
Topics: Reading
No mask like open truth to cover lies,
As to go naked is the best disguise.
—William Congreve
Topics: Honesty
They come together like the Coroner’s Inquest, to sit upon the murdered reputations of the week.
—William Congreve
Topics: Gossip
Men are apt to offend (’tis true) where they find most goodness to forgive.
—William Congreve
Topics: Insults
Blessings ever wait on virtuous deeds, and though a late, a sure reward succeeds.
—William Congreve
Topics: Deeds, Blessings, Results
A wit should be no more sincere than a woman constant.
—William Congreve
Topics: One liners, Wit
Thus grief still treads upon the heels of pleasure; Married in haste, we may repent at leisure.
—William Congreve
Topics: Grief, Marriage
I know a lady that loves talking 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
Topics: Talking
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
Topics: Pleasure
O, she is the antidote to desire.
—William Congreve
Topics: Insults
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”.
—William Congreve
Topics: Letters
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
Topics: Letters
Defer not till tomorrow to be wise. Tomorrow’s sun to thee may never rise.
—William Congreve
Topics: The Present, Procrastination
‘Tis well enough for a servant to be bred at an University. But the education is a little too pedantic for a gentleman.
—William Congreve
Topics: Colleges, Education, Universities
Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life. Security is an insipid thing, through the overtaking and possessing of a wish discovers the folly of the chase.
—William Congreve
Topics: Expectation, Uncertainty, Expectations, Excitement, Joy
If there’s delight in love, ‘Tis when I see that heart, which others bleed for, bleed for me.
—William Congreve
Topics: Love
Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life. Security is an insipid thing.
—William Congreve
Topics: Risk-taking, Safety, Security, Expectation, Uncertainty, Doubt
A wit should no more be sincere, than a woman constant; one argues a decay of parts, as to other of beauty.
—William Congreve
Topics: Sincerity
There is in true beauty, as in courage, somewhat which narrow souls cannot dare to admire.
—William Congreve
Topics: Beauty
You read of but one wise man, and all that he knew was—that he knew nothing.
—William Congreve
Topics: Wisdom
He who closes his ears to the views of others shows little confidence in the integrity of his own views.
—William Congreve
Topics: Confidence
Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.
—William Congreve
Topics: Music, Charm
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.
—William Congreve
Topics: Critics, Criticism
Courtship to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull play.
—William Congreve
Topics: Marriage
I know that’s a secret, for it’s whispered everywhere.
—William Congreve
Topics: Secrets
I find we are growing serious, and then we are in great danger of being dull.
—William Congreve
Topics: Conversation
Guilt is ever at a loss, and confusion waits upon it.
—William Congreve
Topics: Guilt
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Colley Cibber English Playwright
- Christopher Marlowe English Playwright
- Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton British Author, Politician
- John Dryden English Poet
- J. B. Priestley British Novelist, Playwright, Essayist
- John Gay English Poet, Dramatist
- Robert Browning English Poet
- Lope de Vega Spanish Playwright
- Edna St. Vincent Millay American Poet
- Henrik Ibsen Norwegian Playwright
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