William Congreve


English Playwright, Dramatist and Poet

Author Quotes

Married in haste we may repent at leisure. Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.


There is in true beauty, as in courage, something which narrow souls cannot dare to admire.

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.

You are an annihilator of sense.

Married in haste, we repent at leisure.

Rather courtship to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull play.

There is nothing more unbecoming a man of quality than to laugh ... 'tis such a vulgar expression of the passion!

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.

You'll grow devilish fat upon this paper-diet!



These articles subscribed, if I continue to endure you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into a wife.


Music alone with sudden charms can bind the wand'ring sense, and calm the troubled mind.


They are at the end of the gallery retired to their tea and scandal, according to their ancient custom.

When wit and reason both have fail'd to move kind looks and actions, (from success) do prove ev'n silence may be eloquent in love.

Nature, to each allots his proper Sphere, But, that forsaken, we like Comets err Toss'd thro' the Void, by some rude Shock we're broke, And all our boasted Fire is lost in Smoke

Retired to their tea and scandal, according to their ancient custom.


Where modesty's ill manners, 'tis but fitThat impudence and malice pass for wit.

Never go to bed angry, stay up and fight.

Rise to meet him in a pretty disorder - yes- O, nothing is more alluring than a levee from a couch in some confusion.


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English Playwright, Dramatist and Poet