English playwright & novelist (1640-1689)
There is no sinner like a young saint.
APHRA BEHN
The Rover
She knew love would not long subsist on the thin diet of despair, and resolving he was never to be retrieved who once had ceased to love, she strove to bend her soul to useful reason ... there is some hope of recovery when a woman in that extremity will but think of listening to love from any new adorer, and having once resolved to pursue the fugitive no more with the natural artillery of their sighs and tears, reproaches and complaints, they have recourse to every thing that may soonest chase from the heart those thoughts that oppress it.
APHRA BEHN
Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister
Love ceases to be a pleasure, when it ceases to be a secret.
APHRA BEHN
The Lover's Watch
A brave world, sir, full of religion, knavery, and change: we shall shortly see better days.
APHRA BEHN
The Roundheads
Come away; poverty's catching.
APHRA BEHN
The Rover
As love is the most noble and divine passion of the soul, so is it that to which we may justly attribute all the real satisfactions of life, and without it, man is unfinished, and unhappy.
APHRA BEHN
The Fair Jilt
Money speaks sense in a language all nations understand.
APHRA BEHN
The Rover
Oh, I am arm'd with more than complete steel,
The justice of my quarrel.
APHRA BEHN
The Moor's Revenge
Faith, sir, we are here today, and gone tomorrow.
APHRA BEHN
The Lucky Chance
Each moment of a happy lover's hour is worth an age of dull and common life.
APHRA BEHN
The Younger Brother
I value not the censures of the crowd.
APHRA BEHN
The Lucky Chance
A woman's passion is like the tide, it stays for no man when the hour is come.
APHRA BEHN
The Lucky Chance
I think a Play the best divertisement that wise men have: but I do also think them nothing so who do discourse so formallie about the rules of it, as if 'twere the grand affair of humane life.
APHRA BEHN
The Dutch Lover
He made her vows she should be the only woman he would possess while he lived; that no age or wrinkles should incline him to change; for her soul would be always fine, and always young; and he should have an eternal idea in his mind of the charms she now bore; and should look into his heart for that idea, when he could find it no longer in her face.
APHRA BEHN
Oroonoko
Love, like reputation, once fled, never returns more.
APHRA BEHN
The History of the Nun
Women in London are like the rich silks; they are out of fashion a great while before they wear out.
APHRA BEHN
Oroonoko
One hour of right-down love is worth an age of living dully on.
APHRA BEHN
The Rover
Variety is the soul of pleasure.
APHRA BEHN
The Rover
Nothing shows the wit so poor as wonder, nor birth so mean as pride.
APHRA BEHN
The Emperor of the Moon
Fantastic fortune thou deceitful light,
That cheats the weary traveler by night,
Though on a precipice each step you tread,
I am resolved to follow where you lead.
APHRA BEHN
The Rover