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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
Would
Conscience
Honor
Pay
Enemy
Public
Halves
Pleasure
Tribute
Half
Domestic
Must
Secure

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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.
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Invention flags, his brain goes muddy, And black despair succeeds brown study.
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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.
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A woman only obliges a man to secrecy, that she may have the pleasure of telling herself.
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I came up stairs into the world, for I was born in a cellar.
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Every man plays the fool once in his live, but to marry is playing the fool all one's life long.
William Congreve
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In my conscience I believe the baggage loves me, for she never speaks well of me herself, nor suffers any body else to rail at me.
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I am a fool, I know it and yet, Heaven help me, I'm poor enough to be a wit.
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Courtship is to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull play.
William Congreve
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Wit must be foiled by wit: cut a diamond with a diamond.
William Congreve
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Who pleases one against his will.
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He who closes his ears to the views of others shows little confidence in the integrity of his own views.
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A little scorn is alluring.
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If this be not love, it is madness, and then it is pardonable.
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Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life. Security is an insipid thing.
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There are times when sense may be unseasonable, as well as truth.
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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.
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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.
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I always take blushing either for a sign of guilt, or of ill breeding.
William Congreve
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Thus grief still treads upon the heels of pleasure Married in haste, we may repent at leisure.
William Congreve