Top 30 Aphra Behn Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Aphra Behn

Featured in: Reading Quotes

2. “Each moment of a happy lover’s hour is worth an age of dull and common life.”

— Aphra Behn

Featured in: Romance Quotes

3. “No friend to Love like a long voyage at sea.”

— Aphra Behn

4. “One hour of right-down love is worth an age of dully living on.”

— Aphra Behn

5. “Love ceases to be a pleasure, when it ceases to be a secret.”

— Aphra Behn

6. “Faith, Sir, we are here today and gone tomorrow.”

— Aphra Behn

7. “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

8. “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.”

— Aphra Behn

9. “Of all that writ, he was the wisest bard, who spoke this mighty truth- He that knew all that ever learning writ, Knew only this-that he knew nothing yet.”

— Aphra Behn

10. “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

11. “I value fame as much as if I had been born a Hero.”

— Aphra Behn

12. “Where there is no novelty, there can be no curiosity.”

— Aphra Behn

13. “There is no sinner like a young saint.”

— Aphra Behn

14. “God makes all things good; Man meddles with ’em and they become evil.”

— Aphra Behn

15. “Here lies a Proof that Wit can never be Defence enough against Mortality.”

— Aphra Behn

16. “Women in London are like the rich silks; they are out of fashion a great while before they wear out.”

— Aphra Behn

17. “Patience is a flatterer, sir, and an ass, sir.”

— Aphra Behn

18. “Love, like reputation, once fled, never returns more.”

— Aphra Behn

19. “Dear me no Dears, Sir...”

— Aphra Behn

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

— Aphra Behn

21. “Come away; poverty’s catching.”

— Aphra Behn

22. “A brave world, sir, full of religion, knavery, and change: we shall shortly see better days.”

— Aphra Behn

23. “Oh, what a dear ravishing thing is the beginning of an Amour!”

— Aphra Behn

24. “Love’s a thin Diet, nor will keep out Cold.”

— Aphra Behn

25. “Jealousy, the old worm that bites.”

— Aphra Behn

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

— Aphra Behn

27. “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

28. “Kings that made laws, first broke ’em...”

— Aphra Behn

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

— Aphra Behn

30. “Sure, I rose the wrong way today, I have had such damn’d ill luck every way.”

— Aphra Behn

31. “I value not the censures of the crowd.”

— Aphra Behn

32. “You may make love in dancing as well as sitting.”

— Aphra Behn

33. “Tis Love alone can make our fetters please.”

— Aphra Behn

34. “The only shame is the sin.”

— Aphra Behn