Music has charms to sooth a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.
William CongreveRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
It's better to experience love and loss than to never have loved at all.
This quote emphasizes the value of love and the experiences that come with it, suggesting that even though love can lead to pain and loss, it is preferable to pass one’s life without the richness that love provides. Congreve argues against living in fear of loss, advocating for embracing love's joys, even with the understanding that they are temporary.
Themes
LoveExperienceLossLifeYouth
In practice
Example use cases
A speaker at a wedding might use this quote to celebrate the beauty of love.
More from William Congreve
All quotes →She likes herself, yet others hates, For that which in herself she prizes; And while she laughs at them, forgets She is the thing that she despises.
William CongreveRead
Women are like tricks by sleight of hand, Which, to admire, we should not understand
William CongreveRead
Grief walks upon the heels of pleasure; married in haste, we repent at leisure.
William CongreveRead
There is in true beauty, as in courage, something which narrow souls cannot dare to admire.
William CongreveRead
Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life. Security is an insipid thing.
William CongreveRead
Similar quotes
Maybe love was superstition, a prayer we said to keep the truth of loneliness at bay. I tilted my head back. The stars looked like they were close together, when really they were millions of miles apart. In the end, maybe love just meant longing for something impossibly bright and forever out of reach.
Leigh BardugoRead
When He tells us to love our enemies He gives, along with the command, the love itself.
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That's the way it is when you love. It makes you suffer, and I have suffered much in the years since. But it matters little that you suffer, so long as you feel alive with a sense of the close bond that connects all living things, so long as love does not die!
Hermann HesseRead
Every story is a story about death. But perhaps, if we are lucky, our story about death is also a story about love.
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And the merry love the fiddle, and the merry love to dance.
William Butler YeatsRead
But anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Like being there by that summer ocean on the other side of the island while love was fading out of her, the stars burning so extravagantly those nights that anyone could tell you they would never last.
Jack GilbertRead