Life & Wisdom Quote by William Congreve

Congreve lands the line like a gloved slap: a “wit” who’s sincerely earnest is a category error, the way a “constant woman” was treated as one in Restoration comedy’s male imagination. The joke isn’t just misogyny-as-era-flavor; it’s a cold little theory of performance. Wit, in Congreve’s world, is a social technology, not a moral posture. It thrives on agility, on the ability to pivot, to contradict yourself gracefully, to treat truth as something you flirt with rather than marry. Sincerity would pin it down, make it accountable, and accountability is the enemy of sparkle.

The second half is doing double work. On the surface it leans on a tired stereotype: women are fickle, constancy is suspicious, even laughable. Underneath, Congreve exposes how “constancy” functions as a demand rather than a description - a virtue policed in women because it stabilizes male desire and male inheritance. By pairing wit with constancy, he implies both are roles other people insist on reading literally. A woman is expected to be constant; a wit is expected to be incisive. But both expectations are traps. Constancy becomes a burden, wit becomes a brand.

Context matters: Restoration England prized conversational brilliance, mask-wearing, and erotic chess. Congreve’s plays trade in the idea that public life is theater, and the smartest survive by never giving the audience the satisfaction of a fixed self. The line isn’t advice for being dishonest so much as a recognition that in a marketplace of charm, sincerity is bad strategy - and often, for the people compelled to perform virtue, a rigged game.