1688-1732, British Playwright, Poet
A fox may steal your hens, Sir, a whore your health and pence, Sir, your daughter rob your chest, Sir, your wife may steal your rest, Sir, a thief your goods and plate. But this is all but picking, with rest, pence, chest and chicken; it ever was decreed, Sir, if lawyer's hand is fee d, Sir, he steals your whole estate.
John Gay – [Law and Lawyers]
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.
John Gay – [Company]
An open foe may prove a curse, but a pretended friend is worse.
John Gay – [Friends and Friendship]
But his kiss was so sweet, and so closely he pressed, that I languished and pined till I granted the rest.
John Gay – [Kisses and Kissing]
But money, wife, is the true Fuller's Earth for reputations, there is not a spot or a stain but what it can take out.
John Gay – [Money]
Can you support the expense of a husband, hussy, in gaming, drinking and whoring? Have you money enough to carry on the daily quarrels of man and wife about who shall squander most?
John Gay – [Engagement]
Cowards are cruel, but the brave love mercy and delight to save.
John Gay – [Coward and Cowardice]
Do you think your mother and I should have lived comfortably so long together, if ever we had been married? Baggage!
John Gay – [Living Together]
Fill it up. I take as large draughts of liquor as I did of love. I hate a flincher in either.
John Gay – [Alcohol and Alcoholism]
Fools may our scorn, not envy, raise. For envy is a kind of praise.
John Gay – [Envy]
Gamesters and highwaymen are generally very good to their whores, but they are very devils to their wives.
John Gay – [Villains]
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.
John Gay – [Daughters]
I must have women — there is nothing unbends the mind like them.
John Gay – [Men and Women]
Lions, wolves, and vultures don't live together in herds, droves or flocks. Of all animals of prey, man is the only sociable one. Every one of us preys upon his neighbor, and yet we herd together.
John Gay – [Socializing and Socialism]
No retreat. No retreat. They must conquer or die who've no retreat.
John Gay – [Victory]
O Polly, you might have toyed and kissed, by keeping men off, you keep them on.
John Gay – [Flirting]
Of all mechanics, of all servile handycrafts-men, a gamester is the vilest. But yet, as many of the quality are of the profession, he is admitted amongst the politest company.
John Gay – [Gambling]
Shadow owes its birth to light.
John Gay – [Night]
Sure men were born to lie, and women to believe them!
John Gay – [Men and Women]
The brave love mercy, and delight to save.
John Gay – [Courage]