The Way of the World quotes

No, I’ll give you your revenge another time, when you are not so indifferent; you are thinking of something else now, and play too negligently: the coldness of a losing gamester lessens the pleasure of the winner.

I’d no more play with a man that slighted his ill fortune than I’d make love to a woman who undervalued the loss of her reputation.

You have a taste extremely delicate, and are for refining on your pleasures.

She was always civil to me, till of late. I confess

I am not one of those coxcombs who are apt to interpret a woman’s good manners to her prejudice, and think that she who does not refuse ’em everything can refuse ’em nothing.

You are a gallant man, Mirabell; and though you may have cruelty enough not to satisfy a lady’s longing, you have too much generosity not to be tender of her honour.

And for a discerning man somewhat too passionate a lover, for I like her with all her faults; nay, like her for her faults.

Her follies are so natural, or so artful, that they become her, and those affectations which in another woman would be odious serve but to make her more agreeable.

I’ll tell thee, Fainall, she once used me with that insolence that in revenge I took her to pieces, sifted her, and separated her failings: I studied ’em and got ’em by rote.

And for a discerning man somewhat too passionate a lover, for

I like her with all her faults; nay, like her for her faults.

Her follies are so natural, or so artful, that they become her, and those affectations which in another woman would be odious serve but to make her more agreeable.

Yes; he is half-brother to this Witwoud by a former wife, who was sister to my Lady Wishfort, my wife’s mother. If you marry Millamant, you must call cousins too.

I had rather be his relation than his acquaintance.

He comes to town in order to equip himself for travel.

No matter for that; ’tis for the honour of England that all Europe should know we have blockheads of all ages.

I wonder there is not an act of parliament to save the credit of the nation and prohibit the exportation of fools.

By no means, ’tis better as ’tis; ’tis better to trade with a little loss, than to be quite eaten up with being overstocked.

Not at all: Witwoud grows by the knight like a medlar grafted on a crab.

One will melt in your mouth and t’other set your teeth on edge; one is all pulp and the other all core.

So one will be rotten before he be ripe, and the other will be rotten without ever being ripe at all.

Not always: but as often as his memory fails him and his commonplace of comparisons.

He is a fool with a good memory and some few scraps of other folks’ wit.

He is one whose conversation can never be approved, yet it is now and then to be endured. He has indeed one good quality:

Aye, aye, my half-brother. My half-brother he is, no nearer, upon honour.

Then ’tis possible he may be but half a fool.

Good, good, Mirabell, le drôle! Good, good, hang him, don’t let’s talk of him.—Fainall, how does your lady? Gad, I say anything in the world to get this fellow out of my head.

No, but prithee excuse me:—my memory is such a memory.

Have a care of such apologies, Witwoud; for I never knew a fool but he affected to complain either of the spleen or his memory.

What have you done with Petulant?

No, no; what if he be? ’Tis no matter for that, his wit will excuse that.

A wit should no more be sincere than a woman constant: one argues a decay of parts, as t’other of beauty.

Maybe you think him too positive?

I hope they are not persons of condition that you use at this rate.

Condition? Condition’s a dried fig, if I am not in humour.

By this hand, if they were your—a—a—your what-d’ye-call-’ems themselves, they must wait or rub off, if I want appetite.

They are gone, sir, in great anger.

Enough, let ’em trundle. Anger helps complexion, saves paint.

This continence is all dissembled; this is in order to have something to brag of the next time he makes court to Millamant, and swear he has abandoned the whole sex for her sake.

and when they cease to love (we ought to think at least) they loathe, they look upon us with horror and distaste, they meet us like the ghosts of what we were, and as from such, fly from us.

True, ’tis an unhappy circumstance of life, that love should ever die before us; and that the man so often should outlive the lover.

But say what you will, ’tis better to be left than never to have been loved.

True, ’tis an unhappy circumstance of life, that love should ever die before us; and that the man so often should outlive the lover.

But say what you will, ’tis better to be left than never to have been loved.

To pass our youth in dull indifference, to refuse the sweets of life because they once must leave us, is as preposterous as to wish to have been born old, because we one day must be old.

To pass our youth in dull indifference, to refuse the sweets of life because they once must leave us, is as preposterous as to wish to have been born old, because we one day must be old.

For my part, my youth may wear and waste, but it shall never rust in my possession.

Then it seems you dissemble an aversion to mankind only in compliance to my mother’s humour.

Is it possible? Dost thou hate those vipers, men?

I have done hating ’em, and am now come to despise ’em; the next thing I have to do is eternally to forget ’em.

There spoke the spirit of an Amazon, a Penthesilea.

You would not make him a cuckold?

No; but I’d make him believe I did, and that’s as bad.

Why had not you as good do it?

What, was it conscience then? Professed a friendship!

Oh, the pious friendships of the female sex!

More tender, more sincere, and more enduring, than all the vain and empty vows of men, whether professing love to us or mutual faith to one another.

They are turning into the other walk.

While I only hated my husband, I could bear to see him; but since I have despised him, he’s too offensive.

Oh, you should hate with prudence.

While I only hated my husband, I could bear to see him; but since I have despised him, he’s too offensive.

Oh, you should hate with prudence.

Yes, for I have loved with indiscretion.

Oh, you should hate with prudence.

Yes, for I have loved with indiscretion.

You should have just so much disgust for your husband as may be sufficient to make you relish your lover.

Oh, aye, letters—I had letters—I am persecuted with letters—I hate letters.

Nobody knows how to write letters; and yet one has ’em, one does not know why. They serve one to pin up one’s hair.

Is that the way? Pray, madam, do you pin up your hair with all your letters? I find I must keep copies.

You would affect a cruelty which is not in your nature; your true vanity is in the power of pleasing.

Oh, I ask your pardon for that. One’s cruelty is one’s power, and when one parts with one’s cruelty one parts with one’s power, and when one has parted with that, I fancy one’s old and ugly.

Aye, aye; suffer your cruelty to ruin the object of your power, to destroy your lover—and then how vain, how lost a thing you’ll be! Nay, ’tis true; you are no longer handsome when you’ve lost your lover: your beauty dies upon the instant.

If they did not commend us, we were not handsome! Now you must know they could not commend one if one was not handsome. Beauty the lover’s gift! Lord, what is a lover, that it can give?

Why, one makes lovers as fast as one pleases, and they live as long as one pleases, and they die as soon as one pleases; and then, if one pleases, one makes more.

Very pretty. Why, you make no more of making of lovers, madam, than of making so many card-matches.

Very pretty. Why, you make no more of making of lovers, madam, than of making so many card-matches.

One no more owes one’s beauty to a lover than one’s wit to an echo.

They can but reflect what we look and say; vain empty things if we are silent or unseen, and want a being.

Yet, to those two vain empty things, you owe two the greatest pleasures of your life.

To your lover you owe the pleasure of hearing yourselves praised, and to an echo the pleasure of hearing yourselves talk.

But I know a lady that loves talking 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.

I please myself: besides, sometimes to converse with fools is for my health.

Your health! Is there a worse disease than the conversation of fools?

Yes, the vapours; fools are physic for it, next to asafoetida.

Your health! Is there a worse disease than the conversation of fools?

Yes, the vapours; fools are physic for it, next to asafoetida.

You are not in a course of fools?

’tis so dull to act always by advice, and so tedious to be told of one’s faults—I can’t bear it. Well, I won’t have you, Mirabell—I’m resolved—I think—you may go—ha, ha, ha! What would you give that you could help loving me?

I would give something that you did not know I could not help it.

Come, don’t look grave then. Well, what do you say to me?

Come, don’t look grave then. Well, what do you say to me?

I say that a man may as soon make a friend by his wit, or a fortune by his honesty, as win a woman with plain-dealing and sincerity.

Sententious Mirabell!—Prithee don’t look with that violent and inflexible wise face, like Solomon at the dividing of the child in an old tapestry hanging!

Sententious Mirabell!—

Prithee don’t look with that violent and inflexible wise face, like Solomon at the dividing of the child in an old tapestry hanging!

You are merry, madam, but I would persuade you for a moment to be serious.

I have something more.—Gone!—Think of you? To think of a whirlwind, though ’twere in a whirlwind, were a case of more steady contemplation, a very tranquillity of mind and mansion.

A fellow that lives in a windmill has not a more whimsical dwelling than the heart of a man that is lodged in a woman.

There is no point of the compass to which they cannot turn, and by which they are not turned, and by one as well as another; for motion, not method, is their occupation.

A fellow that lives in a windmill has not a more whimsical dwelling than the heart of a man that is lodged in a woman.

There is no point of the compass to which they cannot turn, and by which they are not turned, and by one as well as another; for motion, not method, is their occupation.

To know this, and yet continue to be in love, is to be made wise from the dictates of reason, and yet persevere to play the fool by the force of instinct.—Oh, here come my pair of turtles. What, billing so sweetly?

There is no point of the compass to which they cannot turn, and by which they are not turned, and by one as well as another; for motion, not method, is their occupation.

To know this, and yet continue to be in love, is to be made wise from the dictates of reason, and yet persevere to play the fool by the force of instinct.

—Oh, here come my pair of turtles. What, billing so sweetly? Is not Valentine’s day over with you yet?

The difficulty will be how to recover my acquaintance and familiarity with my former self, and fall from my transformation to a reformation into Waitwell. Nay, I shan’t be quite the same Waitwell neither—for now I remember me,

I’m married, and can’t be my own man again.

Aye, there’s my grief; that’s the sad change of life: To lose my title, and yet keep my wife.

Why, sir, it will be impossible I should remember myself.

Married, knighted, and attended all in one day! ’Tis enough to make any man forget himself.

The difficulty will be how to recover my acquaintance and familiarity with my former self, and fall from my transformation to a reformation into Waitwell.

Ratafia, fool? No, fool. Not the ratafia, fool—grant me patience!—I mean the Spanish paper, idiot; complexion, darling.

Paint, paint, paint, dost thou understand that, changeling, dangling thy hands like bobbins before thee?

Why dost thou not stir, puppet? Thou wooden thing upon wires!

A cup, save thee, and what a cup hast thou brought!

Dost thou take me for a fairy, to drink out of an acorn?

Why didst thou not bring thy thimble? Hast thou ne’er a brass thimble clinking in thy pocket with a bit of nutmeg?—I warrant thee. Come, fill, fill!—So—again.—Knocking at the door.

O madam, you cannot suspect Mrs. Foible’s integrity!

Oh, he carries poison in his tongue that would corrupt integrity itself!

If she has given him an opportunity, she has as good as put her integrity into his hands. Ah, dear Marwood, what’s integrity to an opportunity?—Hark!

Oh, he carries poison in his tongue that would corrupt integrity itself! If she has given him an opportunity, she has as good as put her integrity into his hands.

Ah, dear Marwood, what’s integrity to an opportunity?

—Hark!

Poison him?

Poisoning’s too good for him. Starve him, madam, starve him; marry Sir Rowland, and get him disinherited.

Oh, you would bless yourself to hear what he said!

Let me see the glass.—Cracks, say’st thou? Why, I am arrantly flayed—

I look like an old peeled wall.

Thou must repair me, Foible, before Sir Rowland comes, or I shall never keep up to my picture.

A fool and a doily stuff would now and then find days of grace, and be worn for variety.

I could consent to wear ’em, if they would wear alike; but fools never wear out.

They are such drap de Berri things! Without one could give ’em to one’s chambermaid after a day or two!

That’s a sign indeed it’s no enemy to you.

No, no, it’s no enemy to anybody but them that have it.

Well, an illiterate man’s my aversion: I wonder at the impudence of any illiterate man to offer to make love.

Ah, to marry an ignorant that can hardly read or write.

Why should a man be any further from being married, though he can’t read, than he is from being hanged?

The ordinary’s paid for setting the psalm, and the parish priest for reading the ceremony. And for the rest which is to follow in both cases, a man may do it without book—so all’s one for that.

Why, then, belike thou dost not know thy lady, if thou seest her, ha, friend?

Why, truly, sir, I cannot safely swear to her face in a morning, before she is dressed.

’Tis like I may give a shrewd guess at her by this time.

Really, sir, I can’t tell; here come so many here, ’tis hard to know ’em all.

Oons, this fellow knows less than a starling: I don’t think a’ knows his own name.

Mr. Witwoud, your brother is not behindhand in forgetfulness. I fancy he has forgot you too.

But I tell you ’tis not modish to know relations in town.:you think you’re in the country, where great lubberly brothers slabber and kiss one another when they meet, like a call of sergeants.—’tis not the fashion here; ’tis not, indeed, dear brother.

The fashion’s a fool and you’re a fop, dear brother.

S’heart, I’ve suspected this—by’r lady I conjectured you were a fop, since you began to change the style of your letters, and write in a scrap of paper gilt round the edges, no bigger than a subpoena.

Why, then, Foible’s a bawd, an errant, rank matchmaking bawd. And I, it seems, am a husband, a rank husband, and my wife a very errant, rank wife—all in the way of the world.

’Sdeath, to be a cuckold by anticipation, a cuckold in embryo!

Sure I was born with budding antlers like a young satyr, or a citizen’s child.

Let us never visit together, nor go to a play together, but let us be very strange and well-bred.

Let us be as strange as if we had been married a great while, and as well-bred as if we were not married at all.

Have you any more conditions to offer? Hitherto your demands are pretty reasonable.

To have my closet inviolate; to be sole empress of my tea-table, which you must never presume to approach without first asking leave. And lastly, wherever I am, you shall always knock at the door before you come in.

These articles subscribed, if I continue to endure you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into a wife.

Your bill of fare is something advanced in this latter account.—Well, have I liberty to offer conditions—that when you are dwindled into a wife, I may not be beyond measure enlarged into a husband?

Then we’re agreed. Shall I kiss your hand upon the contract? And here comes one to be a witness to the sealing of the deed.

Fainall, what shall I do? Shall I have him? I think I must have him.

Aye, aye, take him, take him, what should you do?

but he answers her only with singing and drinking—what they may have done by this time I know not, but Petulant and he were upon quarrelling as I came by.

Well, if Mirabell should not make a good husband, I am a lost thing: for I find I love him violently.

So it seems; for you mind not what’s said to you.—If you doubt him, you had best take up with Sir Wilfull.