Wit & Attitude Quote by William Congreve

Congreve’s speaker swaggers like a man lighting a cigarette off the flames of his own reputation. “Leave business to idlers, and wisdom to fools” is a beautifully perverse inversion: the practical world is dismissed as theater for people with nothing better to do, while “wisdom” is framed as a compensatory hobby for the dim. It’s Restoration wit at full voltage, where intelligence isn’t a moral virtue but a social weapon, and seriousness is treated as a kind of bad manners.

The intent isn’t simply hedonism; it’s hierarchy. By declaring “wit be my faculty,” the speaker claims a professional identity that outranks work and piety. Wit here means speed, verbal dominance, the ability to turn any situation into a performance. “Pleasure my occupation” lands like a dare: he doesn’t just indulge, he specializes. Congreve is writing for a culture newly unshackled after Puritan austerity, one that prized sparkle, flirtation, and the elegant demolition of hypocrisy. The line flatters an audience that wants to believe amusement is not escapism but sophistication.

Then the kicker: “let father Time shake his glass.” Time becomes a bartender or an hourglass-wielding heckler, and the speaker waves him on. The subtext is defiance laced with anxiety: if Time is already pouring out your hours, you might as well drink. It’s an age-old bargain dressed in lace cuffs - laugh at mortality hard enough and you can pretend it’s part of the joke, even as the joke clocks you.