Life & Wisdom Quote by William Congreve

Pleasure, Congreve suggests, is never just pleasure; it drags its shadow behind it like a hem you keep stepping on. In that first clause, grief is personified as a dutiful stalker, not a random ambush. The effect is to puncture the fantasy of clean, consequence-free delight. Restoration audiences knew this rhythm well: a culture freshly unbuttoned after Puritan austerity, intoxicated with wit, sex, and spectacle, yet haunted by plague, fire, political volatility, and the ever-present moral hangover that polite society pretended it had outgrown. Congreve’s line flatters indulgence while quietly warning that it comes bundled with a bill.

Then he tightens the screw with a proverb-like jab: “married in haste, we repent at leisure.” Marriage becomes the formal, socially sanctioned version of the same trap - desire upgraded into contract. The rhyme and balance make it feel like common sense, which is part of the trick. He isn’t sermonizing so much as doing what his comedies do best: letting the audience enjoy the sparkle of impulse while hearing, in the cadence, the cold mechanics of consequence.

The subtext is almost cynical about agency. People don’t learn in the moment; they only understand later, slowly, when the fun has moved on and the costs have time to accumulate. Congreve’s wit works because it’s aerodynamic: it lands as an aphorism, but it carries a whole social critique of rashness, reputation, and the emotional aftershocks that follow any fast yes.