John Gay Quotes

So comes a reckoning when the banquet's o'er,— The dreadful reckoning, and men smile no more.

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.

Do you think your Mother and I should have liv'd comfortably so long together, if ever we had been married?

The fly that sips treacle is lost in the sweets.

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.

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

Sure men were born to lie, and women to believe them!

Over the hills and far away.

O Polly, you might have toyed and kissed, By keeping men off, you keep them on.

All in the Downs the fleet was moor'd.

Fill it up. I take as large draughts of liquor as I did of love. I hate a flincher in either.

No retreat. No retreat. They must conquer or die who’ve no retreat.

Man may escape from rope and gun; Nay, some have outlived the doctor's pill: Who takes a woman must be undone, That basilisk is sure to kill. The fly that sips treacle is lost in the sweets, So he that tastes woman, woman, woman, He that tastes woman, ruin meets.

Give me, kind Heaven, a private station,
A mind serene for contemplation:
Title and profit I resign;
The post of honour shall be mine.

Adieu, she cried, and waved her lily hand.