Quote

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
Life
Folly
Discovers
Complaining
Madmen
Expectations
Possessing
Joy
Chase
Security
Expectation
Wish
Joys
Overtaking
Thing
Complain
Insipid
Would
Uncertainty
Madman

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Some by experience find those words mis-placed: At leisure married, they repent in haste.
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One minute gives invention to destroy What to rebuild, will a whole age employ.
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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.
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Whoever is king, is also the father of his country.
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I hope you do not think me prone to any iteration of nuptials.
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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.
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There is nothing more unbecoming a man of quality than to laugh ... 'tis such a vulgar expression of the passion!
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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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I came up stairs into the world, for I was born in a cellar.
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There is in true Beauty, as in Courage, somewhat which narrow Souls cannot dare to admire.
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Nothing but you can lay hold of my mind, and that can lay hold of nothing but you.
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O, she is the antidote to desire.
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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.
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They come together like the Coroner's Inquest, to sit upon the murdered reputations of the week.
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Women like flames have a destroying power never to be quenched till they themselves devour.
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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!
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O fie, miss, you must not kiss and tell.
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If happiness in self-content is placed, The wise are wretched, and fools only blessed.
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Thus grief still treads upon the heels of pleasure Married in haste, we may repent at leisure.
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Who pleases one against his will.
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