166 Quotes by William Congreve

Marriage is honourable, as you say; and if so, wherefore should Cuckoldom be a Discredit, being deriv’d from so honourable a Root?

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!

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.

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.

I nauseate walking; ’tis a country diversion, I loathe the country.

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.

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

She once used me with that insolence, that in revenge I took her to pieces; sifted her, and separated her failings; I studied ’em, and got ’em by rote. The catalogue was so large, that I was not without hopes, one day or other to hate her heartily.

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