Get The BookBrowse Anthology, our 880 page collection of our past decade of Best of Year reviews, now available in hardcover!

Who said: "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."

BookBrowse's Favorite Quotes

"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned." - William Congreve

William Congreve (1670-1729) wrote some of the most popular English plays of the Restoration period (the period from 1660 when the monarchy was restablished in Britain after a 10 year period as a Republic) but is perhaps best remembered for his 1697 tragedy, The Mourning Bride, the source of his two most famous, albeit misquoted, quotes.

"Music has charms to soothe a savage breast" (often misquoted as "beast"), and
"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned," (usually misquoted as "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned")

Congreve was born in West Yorkshire, England in 1670 but grew up in Ireland. After attending Trinity College, Dublin, where he met Jonathan Swift and became life-long friends, he went to London to study law but found himself pulled towards the world of drama. In his first seven years as a playwright he wrote four comedies in addition to his one tragedy, The Mourning Bride, and enjoyed considerable success; but by the time he was thirty his dramatic star was on the wane as public taste shifted against his particular style of 'comedy of manners'.

Thus, he withdrew from the theater and lived the rest of his life on the earnings from his plays, while writing the occasional poem and holding a few minor political positions. He never married but was known for his friendships with prominent actresses and noblewomen, including Henrietta Godolphin, 2nd Duchess of Marlborough (daughter of the famous general John Churchill, later 1st Duke of Marlborough) with whom he had a daughter, Mary.

He died in 1729 and was buried in Westminster Abbey, in an area in the South Transept known as Poets' Corner for the number of poets, playwrights and writers buried or commemorated there, starting with Geoffrey Chaucer in 1400.

More Quotes

This quote & biography originally ran in an issue of BookBrowse's membership magazine. Full Membership Features & Benefits.

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    The Devil Finds Work
    by James Baldwin
    A book-length essay on racism in American films, by "the best essayist in this country" (The New York Times Book Review).

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    The Seven O'Clock Club
    by Amelia Ireland

    Four strangers join an experimental treatment to heal broken hearts in Amelia Ireland's heartfelt debut novel.

  • Book Jacket

    Happy Land
    by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

    From the New York Times bestselling author, a novel about a family's secret ties to a vanished American Kingdom.

  • Book Jacket

    One Death at a Time
    by Abbi Waxman

    A cranky ex-actress and her Gen Z sobriety sponsor team up to solve a murder that could send her back to prison in this dazzling mystery.

  • Book Jacket

    The Fairbanks Four
    by Brian Patrick O’Donoghue

    One murder, four guilty convictions, and a community determined to find justice.

Who Said...

The longest journey of any person is the journey inward

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

J of A T, M of N

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.