John Gay: 56 quotes0 likes
Famous John Gay Quotes
“Whence thy learning? Hath thy toil
O'er books consumed the midnight oil?”
Introduction, "The Shepherd and the Philosopher"; "Midnight oil" was a common phrase, used by Quarles, Shenstone, Cowper, Lloyd, and others.
Fables (1727)
“Lest men suspect your tale untrue,
Keep probability in view.”
Fable, The Painter who pleased Nobody and Everybody
Fables (1727)
“That raven on yon left-hand oak
(Curse on his ill-betiding croak!)
Bodes me no good.”
Fable, The Farmer's Wife and the Raven. Comparable to: "It wasn't for nothing that the raven was just now croaking on my left hand", Plautus, Aulularia, act iv. sc. 3
Fables (1727)
“Sure men were born to lie, and women to believe them!”
Lucy, Act II, sc. xiii
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
Macheath, Act III, sc. xi, air 57
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
John Gay Quotes about love
“Youth's the season made for joys,
Love is then our duty.”
Act II, sc. iv, air 22
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
“Fill it up. I take as large draughts of liquor as I did of love. I hate a flincher in either.”
Mrs. Trapes, Act III, sc. vi
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
Lucy, Act II, sc. xv
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
Act I, sc. xxxiii, air 16
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
Matt, Act II, sc. i, air 19
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
“If love be not his Guide,
He never will come back!”
Lucy, Act II, sc. xv, air 40
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
John Gay Quotes about men
“So comes a reckoning when the banquet's o'er,—
The dreadful reckoning, and men smile no more.”
The What d' ye call it (1715). Comparable to: "The time of paying a shot in a tavern among good fellows, or Pantagruelists, is still called in France a 'quart d'heure de Rabelais,'—that is, Rabelais's quarter of an hour, when a man is uneasy or melancholy", Life of Rabelais (Bohn's edition), p. 13
“O Polly, you might have toyed and kissed,
By keeping men off, you keep them on.”
Act I, sc. viii, air 9
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
Fable XVII, "The Shepherd's Dog and the Wolf"
Fables (1727)
John Gay: Trending quotes
Act I, sc. xxxiii, air 16
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
“How happy could I be with either,
Were t' other dear charmer away!”
Act II, scene ii
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
Variant: How happy could I be with either,
Were t' other dear charmer away!
“The fly that sips treacle is lost in the sweets.”
Act II, scene ii
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
John Gay Quotes
"Beggar", Introduction
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
“Adieu, she cried, and waved her lily hand.”
Sweet William's Farewell to Black-eyed Susan, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“While there is life there 's hope, he cried.”
Fable, The Sick Man and the Angel
Comparable to: "For the living there is hope, but for the dead there is none", Theocritus (3rd century BC), Idyl iv, 42; "Ægroto, dum anima est, spes est" ("While the sick man has life, there is hope", Cicero (1st century BC), Epistolarum ad Atticum, ix, 10
Fables (1727)
“And when a lady's in the case,
You know all other things give place.”
Fable L, "The Hare and many Friends"
Fables (1727)
Peachum, Act I, sc. viii
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
“Over the hills and far away.”
Act I, scene i; comparable to: "O'er the hills and far away", D'Urfey, Pills to purge Melancholy (1628–1723).
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
“The charge is prepar'd, the lawyers are met,
The judges all ranged,—a terrible show!”
Act III, scene ii
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
“Is there no hope? the sick man said;
The silent doctor shook his head.”
Fable, The Sick Man and the Angel
Fables (1727)
“From wine what sudden friendship springs!”
VI, "The Squire and His Cur"
Fables (1727), Fables, Part the Second (1738)
“In every age and clime we see
Two of a trade can never agree.”
Fable XXI, "The Rat-catcher and Cats". Comparable to: "Potter is jealous of potter, and craftsman of craftsman; and poor man has a grudge against poor man, and poet against poet", Hesiod, Works and Days, 24; "Le potier au potier porte envie" (translated: "The potter envies the potter"), Bohn, Handbook of Proverbs; also in Arthur Murphy, The Apprentice, act iii
Fables (1727)
“No retreat. No retreat. They must conquer or die who’ve no retreat.”
"We’ve Cheated the Parson" (song), Polly: an Opera (1729), Air 46, Act II, sc. x
Fable LXIII, "Plutus, Cupid, and Time"
Fables (1727)
"Player", Introduction
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
The Vulture, the Sparrow, and other Birds. Comparable to: "When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, The post of honour is a private station", Joseph Addison, Cato, Act iv, scene 4
Fables (1727), Fables, Part the Second (1738)
Lucy, Act II, sc. ix
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
Act II, sc. iii, air 21
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
“Where yet was ever found a mother
Who'd give her booby for another?”
Fable III, "The Mother, the Nurse, and the Fairy"
Fables (1727)
“Life is a jest; and all things show it. I thought so once; and now I know it.”
My Own Epitaph, inscribed on Gay’s monument in Westminster Abbey; also quoted as "I thought so once; but now I know it".
Variant: Life is a jest, and all things show it,
I thought so once, and now I know it.
“In beauty faults conspicuous grow;
The smallest speck is seen on snow.”
Fable XI, "The Peacock, Turkey, and Goose"
Fables (1727)
“When we risk no contradiction,
It prompts the tongue to deal in fiction.”
Fable X, "The Elephant and the Bookseller"
Fables (1727)
“I must have women—there is nothing unbends the mind like them.”
Macheath, Act II, sc. iii
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
“All in the Downs the fleet was moor'd.”
Sweet William's Farewell to Black-eyed Susan, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
The What D'ye Call It (1715), Act II, sc. viii
Introduction, "The Shepherd and the Philosopher"
Fables (1727)
“T is woman that seduces all mankind;
By her we first were taught the wheedling arts.”
Act I, scene i
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
Trapes, Act III, sc. vi
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
Mrs. Peachum, Act I, sc. viii
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
Mrs. Peachum, Act I, sc. iv
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
Act II, sc. viii, air 26
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
My Lodging Is on the Cold Ground (1720), st. 1
“Those who in quarrels intepose
Must often wipe a bloody nose.”
Fable XXXIV, "The Mastiffs"
Fables (1727)
Fable XLIV http://books.google.com/books?id=8Q9IAAAAMAAJ&q=%22envy+is+a+kind+of+praise%22&pg=PA170#v=onepage, "The Hound and the Huntsman" <br class="br">Fables (1727)
Mrs. Peachum, Act I, sc. viii
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
“By outward show let's not be cheated;
An ass should like an ass be treated.”
XI, "The Packhorse and Carrier"
Fables (1727), Fables, Part the Second (1738)
Peachum, Act I, air 1
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
