"A hungry wolf at all the herd will run, In hopes, through many, to make sure of one.""A little disdain is not amiss; a little scorn is alluring.""A wit should be no more sincere than a woman constant.""Beauty is the lover's gift.""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.""Courtship is to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull play.""Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear.""Grief walks upon the heels of pleasure; married in haste, we repent at leisure.""He who closes his ears to the views of others shows little confidence in the integrity of his own views.""Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.""I confess freely to you, I could never look long upon a monkey, without very mortifying reflections.""I find we are growing serious, and then we are in great danger of being dull.""I know that's a secret, for it's whispered every where.""If there's delight in love, 'Tis when I see that heart, which others bleed for, bleed for me.""In my conscience I believe the baggage loves me, for she never speaks well of me herself, nor suffers any body else to rail at me.""Invention flags, his brain goes muddy, and black despair succeeds brown study.""Music has charms to sooth a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.""Never go to bed angry, stay up and fight.""No, I'm no enemy to learning; it hurts not me.""Say what you will, 'tis better to be left than never to have been loved.""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.""There is in true beauty, as in courage, something which narrow souls cannot dare to admire.""They are at the end of the gallery; retired to their tea and scandal, according to their ancient custom.""They come together like the Coroner's Inquest, to sit upon the murdered reputations of the week.""'Tis well enough for a servant to be bred at an University. But the education is a little too pedantic for a gentleman.""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.""Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life. Security is an insipid thing.""Wit must be foiled by wit: cut a diamond with a diamond.""You are a woman: you must never speak what you think; your words must contradict your thoughts, but your actions may contradict your words."
Congreve was born in Bardsey, West Yorkshire, England (near Leeds). His parents were William Congreve (1637—1708) and his wife, Mary (née Browning; 1636?—1715); a sister was buried in London in 1672. He spent his childhood in Ireland, where his father, a Cavalier, had settled during the reign of Charles II. Congreve was educated at Trinity College in Dublin; there he met Jonathan Swift, who would be his friend for the remainder of his life. Upon graduation, he matriculated in the Middle Temple in London to study law, but felt himself pulled toward literature, drama, and the fashionable life. Artistically, he became a disciple of John Dryden.
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.
Congreve withdrew from the theatre and lived the rest of his life on residuals from his early work. His output from 1700 was restricted to the occasional poem and some translation (notably Molière's Monsieur de Pourceaugnac). Congreve never married; in his own era and through subsequent generations, he was famous for his friendships with prominent actresses and noblewomen, including Anne Bracegirdle, for whom he wrote major parts in all his plays, and Henrietta Godolphin, 2nd Duchess of Marlborough, daughter of the famous general, John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, whom he had probably met by 1703 and with whom he had a daughter, Mary (1723—1764).
As early as 1710, he suffered both from gout and from cataracts on his eyes. Congreve suffered a carriage accident in late September 1728, from which he never recovered (having probably received an internal injury); he died in London in January 1729, and was buried in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.
Two of Congreve's turns of phrase from The Mourning Bride (1697) have become famous, albeit frequently in misquotation:
"Music has charms to soothe a savage breast," spoken by Almeria in Act I, Scene 1. (The word "breast" is often misquoted as "beast", and 'has' sometimes appears as 'hath'.)
"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned," spoken by Zara in Act 3, Scene 8. (This is usually paraphrased as "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned")
Congreve coined another famous phrase in Love for Love (1695).
