QUOTES

65 William Congreve Quotes On Success In Life

William Congreve was an English playwright and poet of the Restoration period. He is known for his clever, satirical dialogue and influence on the comedy of manners style of that period. He was also a minor political figure in the British Whig Party. These William Congreve quotes will motivate you.

Best William Congreve Quotes

  1. “Say what you will, ’tis better to be left than never to have been loved.” ~ William Congreve
  2. “He who closes his ears to the views of others shows little confidence in the integrity of his own views.” ~ William Congreve
  3. Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether, of our worth or worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear.” ~ William Congreve
  4. “Music has charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks or bend a knotted oak.” ~ William Congreve
  5. “Courtship is to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull play.” ~ William Congreve
  6. “I confess freely to you, I could never look long upon a monkey, without very mortifying reflections.” ~ William Congreve
  7. “He that first cries out stop thief, is often he that has stolen the treasure.” ~ William Congreve
  8. “There are times when sense may be unseasonable, as well as truth.” ~ William Congreve

  9. “No mask like open truth to cover lies, As to go naked is the best disguise.” ~ William Congreve
  10. “Delay not till tomorrow to be wise; tomorrow’s sun to thee may never rise.” ~ William Congreve
  11. “Words are the weak support of cold indifference; love has no language to be heard.” ~ William Congreve
  12. “Women are like tricks by sleight of hand, Which, to admire, we should not understand” ~ William Congreve
  13. “Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life. Security is an insipid thing.” ~ William Congreve
  14. “Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d.” ~ William Congreve

  15. “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
  16. “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
  17. “Women like flames have a destroying power; never to be quenched till they themselves devour.” ~ William Congreve
  18. “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
  19. “I find we are growing serious, and then we are in great danger of being dull.” ~ William Congreve

  20. “Nothing but you can lay hold of my mind, and that can lay hold of nothing but you.” ~ William Congreve
  21. “Wit must be foiled by wit: cut a diamond with a diamond.” ~ William Congreve
  22. “There is in true beauty, as in Courage, somewhat which narrow Souls cannot dare to admire.” ~ William Congreve
  23. “If there’s delight in love, ‘Tis when I see that heart, which others bleed for, bleed for me.” ~ William Congreve
  24. “If this be not love, it is madness, and then it is pardonable.” ~ William Congreve
  25. “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
  26. “Whoever is king, is also the father of his country.” ~ William Congreve
  27. “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
  28. “O, she is the antidote to desire.” ~ William Congreve

  29. “Thus grief still treads upon the heels of pleasure; Married in haste, we may repent at leisure.” ~ William Congreve
  30. “A little scorn is alluring.” ~ William Congreve
  31. “Love’s but a frailty of the mind, When ’tis not with ambition joined.” ~ William Congreve
  32. Music alone with sudden charms can bind The wandering sense, and calm the troubled mind.” ~ William Congreve
  33. “I am always of the opinion with the learned if they speak first.” ~ William Congreve
  34. “It is the business of a comic poet to paint the vices and follies of humankind.” ~ William Congreve
  35. “O fie, miss, you must not kiss and tell.” ~ William Congreve

  36. “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
  37. “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
  38. “How hard a thing ‘would be to please you all.” ~ William Congreve
  39. “Who pleases one against his will.” ~ William Congreve
  40. “I always take blushing either for a sign of guilt or of ill-breeding.” ~ William Congreve

  41. “I am a fool, I know it; and yet, Heaven help me, I’m poor enough to be a wit.” ~ William Congreve
  42. “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
  43. “Every man plays the fool once in his live, but to marry is playing the fool all one’s life long.” ~ William Congreve
  44. “Hannibal was a very pretty fellow in those days.” ~ William Congreve
  45. “If happiness in self-content is placed, The wise are wretched, and fools only blessed.” ~ William Congreve
  46. “One minute gives invention to destroy; What to rebuild, will a whole age employ.” ~ William Congreve
  47. “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
  48. “Though marriage makes man and wife one flesh, it leaves ’em still two fools.” ~ William Congreve
  49. “A hungry wolf at all the herd will run, In hopes, through many, to make sure of one.” ~ William Congreve
  50. “I know that’s a secret, for it’s whispered everywhere.” ~ William Congreve

  51. “I came upstairs into the world, for I was born in a cellar.” ~ William Congreve
  52. “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
  53. “These articles subscribed, if I continue to endure you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into wife.” ~ William Congreve
  54. “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
  55. “Beauty is the lover’s gift.” ~ William Congreve
  56. “No, I’m no enemy to learning; it hurts not me.” ~ William Congreve

  57. “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
  58. “A wit should no more be sincere, than a woman constant; one argues a decay of parts, as to other of beauty.” ~ William Congreve
  59. “Invention flags, his brain goes muddy,
    And black despair succeeds brown study.” ~ William Congreve
  60. “There is nothing more unbecoming a man of quality than to laugh … ’tis such a vulgar expression of the passion!” ~ William Congreve
  61. A woman only obliges a man to secrecy, that she may have the pleasure of telling herself.” ~ William Congreve
  62. “Musick has Charms to soothe a savage Breast…” ~ William Congreve
  63. “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
  64. “Blessings ever wait on virtuous deeds, and though a late, a sure reward succeeds.” ~ William Congreve
  65. “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

Comment Your Favourite William Congreve Quotes!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *