Top 15 William Congreve Quotes

Say what you will, ’tis better to be left than never to have been loved.

Heav'n hath no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd.

Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.

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.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

Women are like tricks by sleight of hand,
Which, to admire, we should not understand

If there's delight in love, 'Tis when I see that heart, which others bleed for, bleed for me.

Music hath charms to sooth a savage breast.

Nothing but you can lay hold of my mind, and that can lay hold of nothing but you.

One no more owes one's beauty to a lover than one's wit to an echo

A little scorn is alluring.

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.

I came up stairs into the world, for I was born in a cellar.

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

Thus in this sad, but oh, too pleasing state! my soul can fix upon nothing but thee; thee it contemplates, admires, adores, nay depends on, trusts on you alone.