William Wycherley Quotes

#1. As wit is too hard for power in council, so power is too hard for wit in action.

William Wycherley

#2. I love to be envied, and would not marry a wife that I alone could love; loving alone is as dull as eating alone.

William Wycherley

#3. Poets, like whores, are only hated by each other.

William Wycherley

#4. Mistresses are like books; if you pore upon them too much, they doze you and make you unfit for company; but if used discreetly, you are the fitter for conversation by em.

William Wycherley

#5. Grief is so far from retrieving a loss that it makes it greater; but the way to lessen it is by a comparison with others' losses.

William Wycherley

#6. Wit is more necessary than beauty; and I think no young woman ugly that has it, and no handsome woman agreeable without it.

William Wycherley

#7. Temperance is the nurse of chastity.

William Wycherley

#8. With faint praises one another damn.

William Wycherley

#9. Money makes up in a measure all other wants in men.

William Wycherley

#10. I weigh the man, not his title; 'tis not the king's stamp can make the metal better.

William Wycherley

#11. I have heard people eat most heartily of another man's meat, that is, what they do not pay for.

William Wycherley

#12. A good name is seldom got by giving it oneself.

William Wycherley

#13. Have as much good nature as good sense since they generally are companions.

William Wycherley

#14. Hunger, revenge, to sleep are petty foes, But only death the jealous eyes can close.

William Wycherley

#15. Thy books should, like thy friends, not many be, yet such wherein men may thy judgment see.

William Wycherley

#16. He's a fool that marries, but he's a greater that does not marry a fool; what is wit in a wife good for, but to make a man a cuckold?

William Wycherley

#17. Women serve but to keep a man from better company.

William Wycherley

#18. A beauty masked, like the sun in eclipse, gathers together more gazers than if it shined out.

William Wycherley

#19. Bluster, sputter, question, cavil; but be sure your argument be intricate enough to confound the court.

William Wycherley

#20. Poets, like friends to whom you are in debt, you hate.

William Wycherley

#21. Charity and good-nature give a sanction to the most common actions; and pride and ill-nature make our best virtues despicable.

William Wycherley

#22. Next to the pleasure of finding a new mistress is that of being rid of an old one.

William Wycherley

#23. Ceremony and great professing renders friendship as much suspect as it does religion.

William Wycherley

#24. Good fellowship and friendship are lasting, rational and manly pleasures.

William Wycherley

#25. Women of quality are so civil, you can hardly distinguish love from good breeding.

William Wycherley

#26. Poetry in love is no more to be avoided than jealousy.

William Wycherley

#27. Drinking with women is as unnatural as scolding with 'em.

William Wycherley

#28. Go to your business, pleasure, whilst I go to my pleasure, business.

William Wycherley

#29. Marrying to increase love is like gaming to become rich; alas, you only lose what little stock you had before.

William Wycherley

#30. A mistress should be like a little country retreat near the town, not to dwell in constantly, but only for a night and away.

William Wycherley

#31. Wit has as few true judges as painting.

William Wycherley

#32. Conversation augments pleasure and diminishes pain by our having shares in either; for silent woes are greatest, as silent satisfaction leas; since sometimes our pleasure would be none but for telling of it, and our grief insupportable but for participation.

William Wycherley

#33. Wine gives you liberty, love takes it away.

William Wycherley

#34. Necessity, mother of invention.

William Wycherley

#35. Come, for my part I will have only those glorious, manly pleasures of being very drunk, and very slovenly.

William Wycherley

#36. Your women of honor, as you call em, are only chary of their reputations, not their persons; and 'Tis scandal that they would avoid, not men.

William Wycherley