Congreve Play Quotes & Sayings

the catch is that everything you say must be as authentic as possible. There's no shortcut. There are no tricks. You say it because you mean it and mean it because you say it. The more nervous it makes you, the better, because it means you're being authentic and making yourself vulnerable. — Mark Manson

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

Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision. — Aldous Huxley

Every man plays the fool once in his live, but to marry is playing the fool all one's life long. — William Congreve

Some people are hurting so bad you have to do more than preach a message to them. You have to BE a message to them. — Joyce Meyer

Thoughts arising from practical experience may be a bridle or a spur. — Hyman Rickover

An associate of mine named William Congreve once wrote a very sad play that begins with the line 'Music has charms to sooth a savage beast,' a sentence which here means that if you are nervous or upset, you might listen to some music to calm you down or cheer you up. For instance, as I crouch here behind the alter of the Cathedral of the Alleged Virgin, a friend of mine is playing a sonata on the pipe organ, to calm me down and so that the sounds of my typewriter will not be heard by the worshipers sitting in the pews. The mournful melody of the sonata reminds me of a tune my father used to sing when he did the dishes, and as I listen to it I can temporarily forget six or seven of my troubles. — Lemony Snicket

I know a lady that loves to talk so incessantly, she won't give an echo fair play; she has that everlasting rotation of tongue that an echo must wait till she dies before it can catch her last words! — William Congreve

To converse with Scandal is to play at Losing Loadum, you must lose a good name to him, before you can win it for yourself. — William Congreve

The first step toward the management of disease was replacement of demon theories and humours theories by the germ theory. That very step, the beginning of hope, in itself dashed all hopes of magical solutions. It told workers that progress would be made stepwise, at great effort, and that a persistent, unremitting care would have to be paid to a discipline of cleanliness. So it is with software engineering today. — Fred Brooks

Courtship is to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull play.
(quoted in Life After Life) — William Congreve

A blow job. Why did people do these things to each other? Artemis felt faintly sick. — Marie Phillips

The urgent finds you; you have to find the important. Importance is not fast. It is slow. It is not superficial. It is deep. And as a result, it's extremely powerful. When important matters go wrong, they undermine everything. When they go right, they sustain everything. — Stewart Brand