William Wycherley quotes:

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With faint praises one another damn.

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

Your women of honor, as you call em, are only chary of their reputations, not their persons; and 'Tis scandal that they would avoid, not men.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A good name is seldom got by giving it oneself.

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

Conversation augments pleasure and diminishes pain by our having shares in either; for silent woes are greatest, as silent satisfaction leas; since sometimes our pleasure would be none but for telling of it, and our grief insupportable but for participation.

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

Grief is so far from retrieving a loss that it makes it greater; but the way to lessen it is by a comparison with others' losses.

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

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

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

Necessity, mother of invention.

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

Poets, like whores, are only hated by each other.

Temperance is the nurse of chastity.

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

Wine gives you liberty, love takes it away.

Wit has as few true judges as painting.

Women serve but to keep a man from better company.