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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
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William Congreve
Age: 58 †
Born: 1670
Born: January 24
Died: 1729
Died: January 19
Engineer
Librettist
Playwright
Poet
Translator
Writer
Public
Halves
Pleasure
Tribute
Half
Domestic
Must
Secure
Would
Conscience
Honor
Pay
Enemy
More quotes by William Congreve
I confess freely to you, I could never look long upon a monkey, without very mortifying reflections.
William Congreve
Guilt is ever at a loss, and confusion waits upon it when innocence and bold truth are always ready for expression.
William Congreve
There is nothing more unbecoming a man of quality than to laugh ... 'tis such a vulgar expression of the passion!
William Congreve
There are times when sense may be unseasonable, as well as truth.
William Congreve
A wit should no more be sincere, than a woman constant one argues a decay of parts, as to other of beauty.
William Congreve
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
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
A woman only obliges a man to secrecy, that she may have the pleasure of telling herself.
William Congreve
Women like flames have a destroying power never to be quenched till they themselves devour.
William Congreve
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
One minute gives invention to destroy What to rebuild, will a whole age employ.
William Congreve
Nothing but you can lay hold of my mind, and that can lay hold of nothing but you.
William Congreve
Marriage indeed may qualify the fury of his passion, but it very rarely mends a man's manners.
William Congreve
Whoever is king, is also the father of his country.
William Congreve
Let us be very strange and well-bred:Let us be as strange as if we had been married a great whileAnd as well-bred as if we were not married at all.
William Congreve
Wit must be foiled by wit: cut a diamond with a diamond.
William Congreve
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.
William Congreve
Say what you will, 'tis better to be left than never to have been loved.
William Congreve
If happiness in self-content is placed, The wise are wretched, and fools only blessed.
William Congreve
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
