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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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William Congreve
Age: 58 †
Born: 1670
Born: January 24
Died: 1729
Died: January 19
Engineer
Librettist
Playwright
Poet
Translator
Writer
Thing
Complain
Insipid
Would
Uncertainty
Madman
Life
Folly
Discovers
Complaining
Madmen
Expectations
Possessing
Joy
Chase
Security
Expectation
Wish
Joys
Overtaking

More quotes by William Congreve

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No, I'm no enemy to learning it hurts not me.
William Congreve
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I always take blushing either for a sign of guilt, or of ill breeding.
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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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.
William Congreve
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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.
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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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
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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!
William Congreve
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If there's delight in love, 'Tis when I see that heart, which others bleed for, bleed for me.
William Congreve
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If this be not love, it is madness, and then it is pardonable.
William Congreve
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There are times when sense may be unseasonable, as well as truth.
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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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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To converse with Scandal is to play at Losing Loadum, you must lose a good name to him, before you can win it for yourself.
William Congreve
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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
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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.
William Congreve
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I came up stairs into the world, for I was born in a cellar.
William Congreve
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Women like flames have a destroying power never to be quenched till they themselves devour.
William Congreve
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Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd.
William Congreve
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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