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

William Congreve

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William Congreve
Age: 58 †
Born: 1670
Born: January 24
Died: 1729
Died: January 19
Engineer
Librettist
Playwright
Poet
Translator
Writer
Business
Human
Follies
Humans
Folly
Kind
Vices
Comic
Paint
Kindness
Poet

More quotes by William Congreve

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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 inform'd, by magic numbers and persuasive sound.
William Congreve
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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
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Some by experience find those words mis-placed: At leisure married, they repent in haste.
William Congreve
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I am always of the opinion with the learned, if they speak first.
William Congreve
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Delay not till tomorrow to be wise tomorrow's sun to thee may neve rise.
William Congreve
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Music has charms to sooth a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.
William Congreve
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She likes herself, yet others hates, For that which in herself she prizes And while she laughs at them, forgets She is the thing that she despises.
William Congreve
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I confess freely to you, I could never look long upon a monkey, without very mortifying reflections.
William Congreve
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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
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'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
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Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life. Security is an insipid thing.
William Congreve
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Would any thing but a madman complain of uncertainty? Uncertainty and expectation are joys of life security is an insipid thing and the overtaking and possessing of a wish discovers the folly of the chase.
William Congreve
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I am a fool, I know it and yet, Heaven help me, I'm poor enough to be a wit.
William Congreve
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Marriage is honourable, as you say and if so, wherefore should Cuckoldom be a Discredit, being deriv'd from so honourable a Root?
William Congreve
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All well bred persons lie - Besides, you are a woman you must never speak what you think.
William Congreve
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One minute gives invention to destroy What to rebuild, will a whole age employ.
William Congreve
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Blessings ever wait on virtuous deeds, and though a late, a sure reward succeeds.
William Congreve
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No, I'm no enemy to learning it hurts not me.
William Congreve
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He who closes his ears to the views of others shows little confidence in the integrity of his own views.
William Congreve
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Come, come, leave 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