George Farquhar

Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.

Seduced me first to me a wicked player.

Since a woman must wear chains, I would have the pleasure of hearing 'em rattle a little.

Spare all I have, and take my life.

The shortest pleasures are the sweetest.

There's a pleasure sure, in being mad, which none but mad-men know.

I have fed purely upon ale; I have eat my ale, drank my ale, and I always sleep upon ale.

There's no scandal like rags, nor any crime so shameful as poverty.

I see you have a singing face--a heavy, dull, sonata face.

'Tis a question whether adversity or prosperity makes the most poets.

It is a maxim that man and wife should never have it in their power to hang one another.

'Tis a strange thing, Sam, that among us people can't agree the whole week, because they go different ways upon Sundays.

Kiss and be friends.

'Tis the greatest misfortune in nature for a woman to want a confidant.

Like hungry guests, a sitting audience looks; plays are like suppers; poets are the cooks. The founder's you: the table is the place: the carvers we: the prologue is the grace. Each act, a course, each scene, a different dish, though we're in lent, i doubt you're still for flesh. Satire's the sauce, high-season'd, sharp and rough. Kind masks and beaux, i hope you're pepperproof? Wit is the wine; but 'tis so scarce the true poets, like vintners, balderdash and brew. Your surly scenes, where rant and bloodshed join. Are butcher's meat, a battle's sirloin: your scenes of love, so flowing, soft and chaste, are water-gruel without salt or taste.

'Twas for the good of my country that I should be abroad. Anything for the good of one's country--I'm a Roman for that.

Money is the sinews of love, as of war.

We are the men of intrinsic value, who can strike our fortunes out of ourselves, whose worth is independent of accidents in life, or revolutions in government: we have heads to get money, and hearts to spend it.

Observe this, that tho' a woman swear, forswear, lie, dissemble, back-bite, be proud, vain, malicious, anything, if she secures the main chance, she's still virtuous; that's a maxim.

We love the precepts for the teacher's sake.

Our 'prentice, Tom, may now refuse to wipe his scroundrel master's shoes; for now he's free to sing and play over the hills and far away.

When the blind lead the blind, no wonder they both fall into - matrimony.

Our sex still strikes an awe upon the brave, and only cowards dare affront a woman.

Which none but mad-men know.

Over the hills, and over the main, to Flanders, Portugal, or Spain; the Queen commands, and we'll obey, over the hills and far away.