The Country Wife quotes

Ay, he’s a base fellow for’t. But affectation makes not a woman more odious to them than virtue.

Because your virtue is your greatest affectation, madam.

How, you saucy fellow! would you wrong my honour?

Well, a pox on love and wenching!

Women serve but to keep a man from better company.

Though I can’t enjoy them, I shall you the more. Good fellowship and friendship are lasting, rational, and manly pleasures.

For all that, give me some of those pleasures you call effeminate too; they help to relish one another.

No, 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.

A mistress should be like a little country retreat near the town; not to dwell in constantly, but only for a night and away, to taste the town the better when a man returns.

No, 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.

A mistress should be like a little country retreat near the town; not to dwell in constantly, but only for a night and away, to taste the town the better when a man returns.

I tell you, ’tis as hard to be a good fellow, a good friend, and a lover of women, as ’tis to be a good fellow, a good friend, and a lover of money. You cannot follow both, then choose your side.

I tell you, ’tis as hard to be a good fellow, a good friend, and a lover of women, as ’tis to be a good fellow, a good friend, and a lover of money. You cannot follow both, then choose your side.

Wine gives you liberty, love takes it away.

Gad, he’s in the right on’t.

Wine gives you joy; love, grief and tortures, besides surgeons.

Wine makes us witty; love, only sots. Wine makes us sleep; love breaks it.

By the world he has reason, Harcourt.

A pox on ’em, and all that force nature, and would be still what she forbids ’em!

Affectation is her greatest monster.

Most men are the contraries to that they would seem. Your bully, you see, is a coward with a long sword; the little humbly-fawning physician, with his ebony cane, is he that destroys men.

To be taught! no, sir, I thank you.

Good wives and private soldiers should be ignorant

—I’ll keep her from your instructions, I warrant you.

But if she be silly, she’ll expect as much from a man of forty-nine, as from him of one-and-twenty. But methinks wit is more necessary than beauty; and I think no young woman ugly that has it, and no handsome woman agreeable without it.

’Tis my maxim, 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?

I promise you, you lie; for he would but ruin you, as he has done hundreds. He has no other love for women but that; such as he look upon women, like basilisks, but to destroy ’em.

Ay, but if he loves me, why should he ruin me? answer me to that. Methinks he should not, I would do him no harm.

’Tis very well; but I’ll keep him from doing you any harm, or me either. But here comes company; get you in, get you in.

Then I am contented to make him pay for his scurrility.

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

—Those whom we cannot make hold for gallants, we make fine. Aside.

If I did, nobody would believe me.

The reputation of impotency is as hardly recovered again in the world as that of cowardice, dear madam.

Nay, then, as one may say, you may do your worst, dear, dear sir.

Only by his merit, that has bribed your heart, you see, against your word and rigid honour. But what a devil is this honour! ’tis sure a disease in the head, like the megrim or falling-sickness, that always hurries people away to do themselves mischief.

Men lose their lives by it; women, what’s dearer to ’em, their love, the life of life.

Come, pray talk you no more of honour, nor Master Harcourt; I wish the other would come to secure my fidelity to him and his right in me.

Come, madam, ’tis e’en twelve o’clock, and my mother charged me never to be married out of the canonical hours. Come, come; Lord, here’s such a deal of modesty, I warrant, the first day.

Yes, an’t please your worship, married women show all their modesty the first day, because married men show all their love the first day.

A bedchamber in Pinchwife’s house.

Nay, madam, rather than they shall prejudice your honour, I’ll prejudice theirs; and, to serve you, I’ll lie with ’em all, make the secret their own, and then they’ll keep it.

I am a Machiavel in love, madam.

O, no sir, not that way.

Well, nothing but that could bribe me: I love a woman only in effigy, and good painting as much as I hate them.—I’ll do’t, for

I could adore the devil well painted.

Kisses Mrs. Squeamish.

Well, ’tis e’en so, I have got the London disease they call love;

I am sick of my husband, and for my gallant.

I have heard this distemper called a fever, but methinks ’tis like an ague; for when I think of my husband, I tremble, and am in a cold sweat, and have inclinations to vomit; but when I think of my gallant, dear Mr.

Our reputation! Lord, why should you not think that we women make use of our reputation, as you men of yours, only to deceive the world with less suspicion?

Our virtue is like the statesman’s religion, the quaker’s word, the gamester’s oath, and the great man’s honour; but to cheat those that trust us.

And that demureness, coyness, and modesty, that you see in our faces in the boxes at plays, is as much a sign of a kind woman, as a vizard-mask in the pit.

Come, brother, your wife is yet innocent, you see; but have a care of too strong an imagination, lest, like an over-concerned timorous gamester, by fancying an unlucky cast, it should come.

Women and fortune are truest still to those that trust ’em.

And any wild thing grows but the more fierce and hungry for being kept up, and more dangerous to the keeper.