Quotes from William Congreve

It is the business of a comic poet to paint the vices and follies of human kind.

No, I'm no enemy to learning it hurts not me.

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.

Thou liar of the first magnitude.

Married in haste, we may repent at leisure.

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."

Courtship to marriage is as a very witty prologue to a very dull play.

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.

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

Music has charms to sooth a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.

Never go to bed angry, stay up and fight.

Thou art a retailer of phrases, and dost deal in remnants of remnants.

If I continue to endure you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into a wife.

I warrant you, if he danced till doomsday, he thought I was to pay the piper.

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

Defer not till tomorrow to be wise, tomorrow's sun to thee may never rise.

Every man plays the fool once in his lif marry is playing the fool all one's life, but to marry is to playing the fool all one's life long.

He that first cries out stop thief, is often he that has stolen the treasure.

Men are apt to offend ('tis true) where they find most goodness to forgive.

Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.N.B. This quote is commonly misquoted as savage beast.

Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.

They come together like the Coroner's Inquest, to sit upon the murdered reputations of the week.

Tis well enough for a servant to be bred at an University. But the education is a little too pedantic for a gentleman.

Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life.