William Congreve
"William Congreve was an English playwright and poet.... William Congreve wrote some of the most popular English plays of the Restoration period of the late 17th century. By the age of thirty, he had written four comedies, including Love for Love (premiered 30 April 1695) and The Way of the World (premiered 1700), and one tragedy, The Mourning Bride (1697).
Unfortunately, his career ended almost as soon as it began. After writing five plays from his first in 1693 until 1700, he produced no more as public tastes turned against the sort of high-brow sexual comedy of manners in which he specialized. He reportedly was particularly stung by a critique written by Jeremy Collier (A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage), to the point that he wrote a long reply, "Amendments of Mr. Collier's False and Imperfect Citations."
A member of the Whig Kit-Kat Club, Congreve's career shifted to the political sector, where he held various minor political positions despite his stance as a Whig among Tories."
“You'll grow devilish fat upon this paper-diet!”
“Nothing but you can lay hold of my mind, and that can lay hold of nothing but you.”
“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.”
“Women are like tricks by sleight of hand,Which, to admire, we should not understand”
“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.”
“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.”
“Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.”
“If there's delight in love, 'Tis when I see that heart, which others bleed for, bleed for me.”
“I came up stairs into the world, for I was born in a cellar.”
“Of those few fools, who with ill stars are curst,Sure scribbling fools, called poets, fare the worst:For they're a sort of fools which fortune makes,And, after she has made them fools, forsakes.With Nature's oafs 'tis quite a different case,For Fortune favours all her idiot race.In her own nest the cuckoo eggs we find,Over which she broods to hatch the changeling kind:No portion for her own she has to spare,So much she dotes on her adopted care.Poets are bubbles, by the town drawn in,Suffered at first some trifling stakes to win:But what unequal hazards do they run!Each time they write they venture all they've won:The Squire that's buttered still, is sure to be undone.This author, heretofore, has found your favour,But pleads no merit from his past behaviour.To build on that might prove a vain presumption,Should grant to poets made admit resumption,And in Parnassus he must lose his seat,If that be found a forfeited estate.”
“A little scorn is alluring. ”
“Heav'n hath no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd,Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd.”
“Music hath charms to sooth a savage breast.”