The Conscious Lovers quotes

You knave, you know it; I took thee for thy gravity and sobriety, in my wild years.

Ah, sir! our manners were formed from our different fortunes, not our different age. Wealth gave a loose to your youth, and poverty put a restraint upon mine.

Well, Humphry, you know I have been a kind master to you; I have used you, for the ingenuous nature I observed in you from the beginning, more like an humble friend than a servant.

But they know I love ’em, and that makes the task less painful however. Oh, here’s the prince of poor coxcombs, the representative of all the better fed than taught. Ho! ho! Tom, whither so gay and so airy this morning?

Sir, we servants of single gentlemen are another kind of people than you domestic ordinary drudges that do business; we are raised above you.

The pleasures of board-wages, tavern dinners, and many a clear gain; vails, alas! you never heard or dreamt of.

and, if I was rich, I could twire and loll as well as the best of them.

Oh, Tom! Tom! is it not a pity that you should be so great a coxcomb, and I so great a coquet, and yet be such poor devils as we are?

Mrs. Phillis, I am your humble servant for that—

for, sir, since you lost my dear mother, your time has been so heavy, so lonely, and so tasteless, that you are so good as to guard me against the like unhappiness, by marrying me prudentially by way of bargain and sale.

For, as you well judge, a woman that is espoused for a fortune, is yet a better bargain if she dies; for then a man still enjoys what he did marry, the money, and is disencumbered of what he did not marry, the woman.

But pray, sir, do you think Lucinda, then, a woman of such little merit?

My tender obligations to my father have laid so inviolable a restraint upon my conduct that, till I have his consent to speak, I am determined, on that subject, to be dumb forever.

Well, sir, to your praise be it spoken, you are certainly the most unfashionable lover in Great Britain.

Sir, Mr. Myrtle’s at the next door, and, if you are at leisure, will be glad to wait on you.

Trust not those who will think the worse of you for your confidence in them; serpents who lie in wait for doves. Won’t you be on your guard against those who would betray you? Won’t you doubt those who would contemn you for believing ’em?

Take it from me, fair and natural dealing is to invite injuries; ’tis bleating to escape wolves who would devour you!

Such is the world—Aside. and such (since the behaviour of one man to myself) have I believed all the rest of the sex.

Oh! to be sure, keep up your form; don’t see him in a bedchamber—Apart. This is pure prudence, when she is liable, wherever he meets her, to be conveyed where’er he pleases.

All the rest of my life is but waiting till he comes. I live only when I’m with him.

Well, go thy ways, thou wilful innocent!—Aside. I once had almost as much love for a man, who poorly left me to marry an estate;

Ah! niece! there is a sort of bashfulness which is the best engine to carry on a shameless purpose.

Some men’s modesty serves their wickedness, as hypocrisy gains the respect due to piety.

But I will own to you, there is one hopeful symptom, if there could be such a thing as a disinterested lover. But it’s all a perplexity—till—till—till—

It will be nothing for them to give us a little being of our own, some small tenement, out of their large possessions. Whatever they give us, it will be more than what they keep for themselves.

One acre with Phillis would be worth a whole county without her.

O, could I but believe you!

Myrtle, what your father will do with Mr. Bevil, nor what you all, especially my lady, mean by admitting Mr. Cimberton as particularly here as if he were married to you already; nay, you are married actually as far as people of quality are.

You have different beds in the same house.

Pshaw! I have a very great value for Mr. Bevil, but have absolutely put an end to his pretensions in the letter I gave you for him.

But does not my lady remember you are to love as well as obey?

To love is a passion, it is a desire, and we must have no desires.

—Oh, I cannot endure the reflection! With what insensibility on my part, with what more than patience have I been exposed and offered to some awkward booby or other in every county of Great Britain!

Every corner of the land has presented me with a wealthy coxcomb. As fast as one treaty has gone off, another has come on, till my name and person have been the tittle-tattle of the whole town.

What is this world come to?⁠—no shame left⁠—to be bartered for like the beasts of the field

, and that in such an instance as coming together to an entire familiarity and union of soul and body. Oh! and this without being so much as well-wishers to each other, but for increase of fortune.

How do you get all this intelligence?

By an art I have, I thank my stars, beyond all the waiting-maids in Great Britain⁠—the art of listening, madam, for your ladyship’s service.

I shall soon know as much as you do; leave me, leave me, Phillis, begone. Here, here! I’ll turn you out. My mother says I must not converse with my servants, though I must converse with no one else.

—

How unhappy are we who are born to great fortunes! No one looks at us with indifference, or acts towards us on the foot of plain dealing

; yet, by all I have been heretofore offered to or treated for I have been used with the most agreeable of all abuses—flattery. But now, by this phlegmatic fool I’m used as nothing, or a mere thing.

I put on a serenity while my fellow was present; but I have never been more thoroughly disturbed. This hot man! to write me a challenge, on supposed artificial dealing, when I professed myself his friend!

I can live contented without glory; but I cannot suffer shame.

What’s to be done? But first let me consider Lucinda’s letter again. Reads.

My son, sir, is a discreet and sober gentleman.

Sir, I never saw a man that wenched soberly and discreetly, that ever left it off; the decency observed in the practice hides, even from the sinner, the iniquity of it.

They pursue it, not that their appetites hurry ’em away, but, I warrant you, because ’tis their opinion they may do it.

Yes, a man is very ill that’s in a very ill-humour.

To be a father is to be in care for one whom you oftener disoblige than please by that very care

—Oh! that sons could know the duty to a father before they themselves are fathers—But, perhaps, you’ll say now that I am one of the happiest fathers in the world;

As well as with twenty others, madam.

It is the glory and honour of a great fortune to live in continual treaties, and still to break off: it looks great, madam.

True, Phillis—yet to return our blood again into the Cimbertons is an honour not to be rejected—But were not you saying that Sir John Bevil’s creature, Humphry, has been with Mr. Sealand?

Why, sirrah, though you are a country boy, you can see, can’t you? You know whether she is at home, when you see her, don’t you?

Nay, nay, I’m not such a country lad neither, master, to think she’s at home because I see her. I have been in town but a month, and I lost one place already for believing my own eyes.

Why, sirrah! have you learnt to lie already?

Why, sirrah! have you learnt to lie already?

Ah, master! things that are lies in the country are not lies at London.

I begin to know my business a little better than so—But an you please to walk in, I’ll call a gentlewoman to you that can tell you for certain—she can make bold to ask my lady herself.

If, sir, you can overlook the injury of being in treaty with one who has meanly left her, as you have generously asserted your right in her, she is yours.

Mr. Myrtle, though you have ever had my heart, yet now I find I love you more, because I bring you less.

We have much more than we want; and I am glad any event has contributed to the discovery of our real inclinations to each other.