William Wycherley

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

— William Wycherley

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

— William Wycherley

With faint praises one another damn.

— William Wycherley

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

— William Wycherley

Women serve but to keep a man from better company.

— William Wycherley

Necessity, mother of invention.

— William Wycherley

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

— William Wycherley

A good name is seldom got by giving it oneself.

— William Wycherley

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

— William Wycherley

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

— William Wycherley

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

— William Wycherley

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

— William Wycherley

Thy books should, like thy friends, not many be/Yet such wherein men may thy judgment see.

— William Wycherley

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

— William Wycherley

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

— William Wycherley

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

— William Wycherley

But methings wit is more necessary than beauty; and I think no young woman ugly that has it, and no handsome woman…

— William Wycherley

He's a fool that marries, but he's a greater that does not marry a fool; what is wit in a wife good…

— William Wycherley

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

— William Wycherley

Your women of honor, as you call 'em , are only chary of their reputations, not their persons, and 'tis scandal they…

— William Wycherley

Mistresses are like books; if you pore upon them too much, they doze you and make you unfit for company; but if…

— William Wycherley

Grief is so far from retrieving a loss that it makes it greater; but the way to lessen it is by a…

— William Wycherley

A mistress should be like a little country retreat near the town, not to dwell in constantly, but only for a night…

— William Wycherley

Conversation augments pleasure and diminishes pain by our having shares in either; for silent woes are greatest, as silent satisfaction leas; since…

— William Wycherley

Wit has as few true judges as painting.

— William Wycherley

Wine gives you liberty, love takes it away.

— William Wycherley

Temperance is the nurse of chastity.

— William Wycherley

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

— William Wycherley

“Tis my maxim, he's a fool that marries, but he's a greater that does not marry a fool.”

— William Wycherley

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

— William Wycherley

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

— William Wycherley

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

— William Wycherley

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

— William Wycherley

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

— William Wycherley

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

— William Wycherley

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

— William Wycherley

He's a fool that marries; but he's a greater fool that does not marry a fool.

— William Wycherley

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

— William Wycherley