222 Quotes by John Gay

Life is a jest, and all things show it, I thought so once, and now I know it.

From kings to cobblers ‘tis the same; Bad servants wound their masters’ fame.

To frame the little animal, provide All the gay hues that wait on female pride: Let Nature guide thee; sometimes golden wire The shining bellies of the fly require; The peacock’s plumes thy tackle must not fail, Nor the dear purchase of the sable’s tail.

Around the steel no tortur’d worm shall twine, No blood of living insect stain my line; Let me, less cruel, cast the feather’d hook, With pliant rod athwart the pebbled brook, Silent along the mazy margin stray, And with the fur-wrought fly delude the prey.

She who has never lov’d, has never liv’d.

Why is the hearse with scutcheons blazon’d round, And with the nodding plume of ostrich crown’d? No; the dead know it not, nor profit gain; It only serves to prove the living vain.

Who hath not heard the rich complain Of surfeits, and corporeal pain? He barr’d from every use of wealth, Envies the ploughman’s strength and health.

I must have women – there is nothing unbends the mind like them.

A man is always afraid of a woman that loves him too much.