35 Aphra Behn Quotes Worth Sharing
Aphra Behn was a renaissance era 17th century English poet, novelist and playwright. Behn broke every cultural norm prevalent in society to be recognized as a literary role model for aspiring female authors in the years to come. She was the first female to make a living out of writing in a time when the number of active professional writers was negligible. There is an inadequacy of information on her personal life due to intentional obscurity. With the onset of the Exclusion Crisis under Charles II regime, she went on to write an epilogue and prologue. Thereafter, she concentrated largely on prose writing and translation. According to modern critics, her work in plays such as Oroonoko, Abdelazer, The Rover and The Feigned Courtesans paved the path of development of English novels. Behn will always be remembered as a prolific fiction and play writer whose work attracted controversies and scandals due frequent references of homoerotic and sexual themes. Aphra’s thoughts and saying emphasized on love, life, humanity, compassion, pleasures, sexuality and feminism. Delve into these quotes from this bold writer.
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.
That perfect tranquillity of life, which is nowhere to be found but in retreat, a faithful friend and a good library.
He that knew all that learning ever writ, Knew only this - that he knew nothing yet.
Nothing is more capable of troubling our reason, and consuming our health, than secret notions of jealousy in solitude.
Faith, sir, we are here today, and gone tomorrow.
One hour of right-down love is worth an age of dully living on.
All I ask, is the privilege for my masculine part the poet in me.... If I must not, because of my sex, have this freedom... I lay down my quill and you shall hear no more of me.
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.
Time lessens all extremes and reduces 'em to mediums and unconcern ...
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.
Oh, what a dear ravishing thing is the beginning of an Amour!
Kings that made laws, first broke 'em ...
A brave world, sir, full of religion, knavery, and change: we shall shortly see better days.
God makes all things good; Man meddles with 'em and they become evil.
Patience is a flatterer, sir, and an ass, sir.
Who is't that to woman's beauty would submit, And yet refuse the fetters of their wit?
Money speaks sense in a language all nations understand.
Variety is the soul of pleasure.
Come away; poverty's catching.
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.
Love, like reputation, once fled, never returns more.
Each moment of a happy love's hour is worth an age of dull and common life.
Where there is no novelty, there can be no curiosity.
But time lessens all extremes, & reduces them to mediums & unconcern.
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.
Possessed with a thousand thoughts of past joys
Here lies a Proof that Wit can never be Defence enough against Mortality
No friend to Love like a long voyage at sea.
Willmore: There is no sinner like a young saint.
