John Gay Quotes
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O Polly, you might have toyed and kissed, by keeping men off, you keep them on.
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How the mother is to be pitied who hath handsome daughters! Locks, bolts, bars, and lectures of morality are nothing to them: they break through them all. They have as much pleasure in cheating a father and mother, as in cheating at cards.
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How happy I am, if you say this from your heart! For I love thee so, that I could sooner bear to see thee hang'd than in the Arms of another.
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A rich rogue nowadays is fit company for any gentleman; and the world, my dear, hath not such a contempt for roguery as you imagine.
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Fill ev'ry glass, for wine inspires us, And fires us With courage, love and joy. Women and wine should life employ. Is there ought else on earth desirous?
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By outward show let's not be cheated;An ass should like an ass be treated.
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Where yet was ever found a motherWho'd give her booby for another?
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Fools may our scorn, not envy, raise. For envy is a kind of praise.
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Fill it up. I take as large draughts of liquor as I did of love. I hate a flincher in either.
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She who has never loved has never lived.
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If Poverty be a Title to Poetry, I am sure nobody can dispute mine. I own myself of the Company of Beggars; and I make one at their Weekly Festivals at St. Giles's. I have a small Yearly Salary for my Catches, and am welcome to a Dinner there whenever I please, which is more than most Poets can say.
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Sure men were born to lie, and women to believe them!
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Those who in quarrels interpose, must often wipe a bloody nose.
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Through all the Employments of Life Each Neighbour abuses his Brother;Whore and Rogue they call Husband and Wife:All Professions be-rogue one another:The Priest calls the Lawyer a Cheat,The Lawyer be-knaves the Divine:And the Statesman, because he's so great, Thinks his Trade as honest as mine.
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Give me, kind Heaven, a private station,A mind serene for contemplation:Title and profit I resign;The post of honour shall be mine.
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Adieu, she cried, and waved her lily hand.
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What then in love can woman do? If we grow fond they shun us. And when we fly them, they pursue: But leave us when they've won us.
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So comes a reckoning when the banquet's o'er,- The dreadful reckoning, and men smile no more.
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From wine what sudden friendship springs!
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'T is woman that seduces all mankind; By her we first were taught the wheedling arts.
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Shadow owes its birth to light.
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In every age and clime we seeTwo of a trade can never agree.
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You know, my Dear, I never meddle in matters of Death; I always leave those Affairs to you. Women indeed are bitter bad Judges in these cases, for they are so partial to the Brave that they think every Man handsome who is going to the Camp or the Gallows.
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We only part to meet again.