Aphra Behn Quotes

That perfect tranquility of life, which is nowhere to be found but in retreat, a faithful friend and a good library.

There is no sinner like a young saint.

All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.

Money speaks sense in a language all nations understand.

A poet is a painter in his way, he draws to the life, but in another kind; we draw the nobler part, the soul and the mind; the pictures of the pen shall outlast those of the pencil, and even worlds themselves.

Variety is the soul of pleasure.

For now that Aphra Behn had done it, girls could go to their parents and say, You need not give me an allowance; I can make money by my pen.

Where there is no novelty, there can be no curiosity.

Love, like reputation, once fled, never returns more.

Here lies a Proof that Wit can never be Defence enough against Mortality

But time lessens all extremes, & reduces them to mediums & unconcern.

Each moment of a happy love's hour is worth an age of dull and common life.

Possessed with a thousand thoughts of past joys

You may make love in dancing as well as sitting.

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.

Willmore: There is no sinner like a young saint.

No friend to Love like a long voyage at sea.

He knew almost as much as if he had read much.

For thou hast made a very fiend of me, and I have hell within.

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.

Love ceases to be a pleasure when it ceases to be a secret.

A woman’s passion is like the tide, it stays for no man when the hour is come.

I value not the censures of the crowd.

This old dead hero had one only daughter left of his race; a beauty that, to describe her truly, one need say only, she was female to the noble male; the beautiful black Venus to our young Mars; as charming in her person as he, and of delicate virtues. I have seen an hundred white men sighing after her, and making a thousand vows at her feet, all vain, and unsuccessful; and she was, indeed, too great for any, but a prince of her own nation to adore.

Each moment of the happy lover's hour is worth an age of dull and common life.

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.

he told Byam he had rather die than live upon the same earth with such dogs.

And did with sighs their fate deplore, Since I must shelter them no more; And if before my joys were such, In having heard, and seen too much, My grief must be as great and high, When all abandoned I shall be, Doomed to a silent destiny.

The only shame is the sin.

Εκείνη η τέλεια γαλήνη στη ζωή που δεν μπορεί να βρεθεί παρά μόνο στην απόσυρση, σε ένα καλό φίλο, σε μια καλή βιβλιοθήκη.

От прекалено любопитство бил изгубен раят.

Jane Austen should have laid a wreath upon the grave of Fanny Burney, and George Eliot done homage to the robust shade of Eliza Carter – the valiant old woman who tied a bell to her bedstead in order that she might wake early and learn Greek. All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, which is, most scandalously but rather appropriately, in Westminster Abbey, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds. It is she – shady and amorous as she was – who makes it not quite fantastic for me to say to you tonight: Earn five hundred a year by your wits. Here,

When he came, attended by all the young soldiers of any merit, he was infinitely surprised at the beauty of this fair Queen of Night, whose face and person was so exceeding all he had ever beheld; that lovely modesty with which she received him, that softness in her look, and sighs, upon the melancholy occasion of this honour that was done by so great a man as Oroonoko, and a prince of whom she had heard such admirable things; the awfulness wherewith she received him, and the sweetness of her words and behavior while he stayed, gained a perfect conquest over his fierce heart, and made him feel the victor could be subdued.

WILLMORE: Nay, if we part so, let me die like a Bird upon a Bough, at the Sheriff's Charge. By Heaven, both the Indies shall not buy thee from me. I adore thy Humour and will marry thee, and we are so of one Humour, it must be a Bargain - give me thy Hand - [Kisses her hand.] And now let the blind ones (Love and Fortune) do their worst.

The king, enraged at this delay, hastily demanded the name of the bold man that had married a woman of her degree without his consent. Imoinda, seeing his eyes fierce, and his hands tremble, whether with a age or anger, I know not, but she fancied the last, almost repented she had said so much, for now she feared the storm would fall on the prince; she therefore said a thousand things to appease the raging of his flame, and to prepare him to hear who it was with calmness; but before she spoke, he imagined who she meant, but would not seem to do so, but commanded her to lay aside her mantle and suffer herself to receive his caresses; or, by his gods, he swore, that happy man whom she was going to name should die, though it were even Oroonoko himself. 'Therefore,' said he, 'deny this marriage, and swear thyself a maid.' 'That,' replied Imoinda, 'by all our powers I do, for I am not yet known to my husband.' 'Tis enough,' said the king, 'tis enough to satisfy both my conscience, and my heart.' And rising from his seat, he went and led her into the bath, it being in vain for her to resist.

This fellow has a glimpse of profundity.

Nothing shows the wit so poor, as wonder, nor birth so mean, as pride.

Punishments hereafter are suffer'd by one's self; and the World takes no Cognizance whether this God has reveng'd 'em or not, 'tis done so secretly, and deferr'd so long.

Each moment of a happy lover’s hour is worth an age of dull and common life. —Aphra Behn

A man of wit could not be a knave or villain.

As we were coming up again, we met with some Indians of strange aspects, that is, of a larger size, and other sort of features, than those of our country. Our Indian slaves, that rowed us, asked them some questions, but they could not understand us, but showed us a long cotton string, with several knots on it, and told us, they had been coming from the mountains so many moons as there were knots.

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

And ’tis most evident and plain that simple Nature is the most harmless, inoffensive, and virtuous mistress. ’Tis she alone, if she were permitted, that better instructs the world than all the inventions of man. Religion would here but destroy that tranquillity they possess by ignorance; and laws would but teach ’em to know offense, of which now they have no notion.

There was no faith in the white men, or the gods they ador'd; who instructed them in principles so false, that honest men could not live among them.

Caesar cut him open with a knife, to see where those wounds were that had been reported to him, and why he did not die of 'em. But I shall now relate a thing that possibly will find no credit among men, because 'tis a notion commonly received with us, that nothing can receive a wound in the heart and live; but when the heart of this courageous animal was taken out, there were seven bullets of lead in it, and the wounds seamed up with great scars, and she lived with the bullets a great while, for it was long since they were shot.

Aphra Behn (1640–89), was renowned, and vilified, as a successful playwright and poet, the first Englishwoman to achieve such literary fame. She was denounced as a ‘lewd harlot’, who dared to describe how a young wife can sexually exhaust her husband, and reduce him to a trembling wreck. She made literary history by giving the woman’s version of premature ejaculation, for which male poets too often blamed their ‘fair nymphs’. In her poem ‘The Disappointment’ the ‘hapless swain’ is accused of trying to prolong his pleasure ‘which too much love destroys’ and so finds ‘his vast pleasure turned to pain’. 201

We might Love, and yet be Innocent.

New editions of the collected plays were published—the Third Folio in 1663 and the Fourth Folio in 1685—ensuring Shakespeare’s survival in print as well as onstage. The plays of Shakespeare’s contemporaries were revived, too, and sometimes saw more performances. It was Shakespeare, however, who was increasingly deified: “We all well know that the immortal Shakespears Playes… have better pleased the World than Jonsons Works,” wrote Aphra Behn,

All trembling in my arms Aminta lay, Defending of the bliss I strove to take; Raising my rapture by her kind delay, Her force so charming was and weak. The soft resistance did betray the grant, While I pressed on the heaven of my desires; Her rising breasts with nimbler motions pant; Her dying eyes assume new fires. Now to the height of languishment she grows, And still her looks new charms put on; Now the last mystery of Love she knows, We sigh, and kiss: I waked, and all was done. 'Twas but a dream, yet by my heart I knew, Which still was panting, part of it was true: Oh how I strove the rest to have believed; Ashamed and angry to be undeceived!

And these people represented to me an absolute idea of the first state of innocence, before man knew how to sin. And ’tis most evident and plain that simple Nature is the most harmless, inoffensive, and virtuous mistress. ’Tis she alone, if she were permitted, that better instructs the world than all the inventions of man. Religion would here but destroy that tranquillity they possess by ignorance; and laws would but teach ’em to know offense, of which now they have no notion.

[T]he Pictures of the Pen shall outlast those of the Pencil, and even Worlds themselves.