“A woman's love is like the morning dew. It's just as likely to settle on a horse turd as a rose.”
Leaving Cheyenne (1963).
Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book III. Jason and Medea, Lines 1019–1021
Ἰαίνετο δὲ φρένας εἴσω τηκομένη, οἷόν τε περὶ ῥοδέῃσιν ἐέρση τήκεται ἠῴοισιν ἰαινομένη φαέεσσιν.
“A woman's love is like the morning dew. It's just as likely to settle on a horse turd as a rose.”
Leaving Cheyenne (1963).
“Her berth was of the wombe of morning dew,
And her conception of the joyous Prime.”
Canto 6, stanza 3
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book III
“He was exhaled; his great Creator drew
His spirit, as the sun the morning dew.”
On the Death of a Very Young Gentlemen (1700).
Song Roses of Picardy http://www.firstworldwar.com/audio/rosesofpicardy.htm
Aaro Hellaakoski. "The song of the pike hauen laulu." Aina Swan Cutler (trans.) in: Aili Jarvenpa, Michael G. Karni (1989), Sampo, the magic mill: a collection of Finnish-American writing.
Canto IV, stanza 1.
The Lady of the Lake http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3011 (1810)
Source: Leaving Cheyenne
Mary of Argyle, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).