Aging & Wisdom Quote by Aphra Behn

Behn doesn’t romanticize love; she weaponizes it against the drab economics of ordinary living. “Each moment” is a unit of time so small it sounds almost petty, and then she inflates it to “an age,” a move that turns intimacy into a form of time theft. The lover isn’t just happy; they’re rich in minutes. Everyone else is stuck grinding through “dull and common life,” a phrase that lands like a slap at the respectable classes who treat passion as a juvenile distraction.

The line’s intent is both seductive and insurgent. On the surface it flatters lovers with a lavish conversion rate: one ecstatic hour buys you a lifetime’s worth of meaning. Underneath, it suggests that the default social order is a slow death by routine, and that desire is one of the few experiences capable of puncturing it. Behn, a Restoration dramatist who wrote frankly about sex, money, and power, knew exactly how “common life” was policed, especially for women. Respectability demanded women act as if time belonged to fathers, husbands, and creditors. A “happy lover’s hour” is a small rebellion: time claimed for pleasure rather than duty.

Stylistically, the sentence works because it’s not ethereal. It’s comparative, almost accountant-like, turning feeling into measurable value. That cool arithmetic makes the claim hit harder: passion isn’t a luxury; it’s an alternative calendar, and it exposes how impoverished the sanctioned one really is.