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

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I came up stairs into the world, for I was born in a cellar.
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I find we are growing serious, and then we are in great danger of being dull.
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Some by experience find those words mis-placed: At leisure married, they repent in haste.
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Wit must be foiled by wit: cut a diamond with a diamond.
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I nauseate walking 'tis a country diversion, I loathe the country.
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Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life. Security is an insipid thing.
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These articles subscribed, if I continue to endure you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into wife.
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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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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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I confess freely to you, I could never look long upon a monkey, without very mortifying reflections.
William Congreve
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I always take blushing either for a sign of guilt, or of ill breeding.
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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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It is the business of a comic poet to paint the vices and follies of human kind.
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Thou art a retailer of phrases, and dost deal in remnants of remnants.
William Congreve
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O ay, letters - I had letters - I am persecuted with letters - I hate letters - nobody knows how to write letters and yet one has 'em, one does not know why - they serve one to pin up one's hair.
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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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.
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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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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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Invention flags, his brain goes muddy, And black despair succeeds brown study.
William Congreve