Quotes by John Gay

• The comfortable estate of widowhood is the only hope that keeps up a wife's spirits.
• She who has never loved has never lived.
• Shadow owes its birth to light.
• Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand.
• The brave love mercy, and delight to save.
• There is no dependence that can be sure but a dependence upon one's self.
• Those who in quarrels interpose, must often wipe a bloody nose.
• We only part to meet again.
• But his kiss was so sweet, and so closely he pressed, that I languished and pined till I granted the rest.
• On the choice of friends, Our good or evil name depends.
• What then in love can woman do? If we grow fond they shun us. And when we fly them, they pursue: But leave us when they've won us.
• O Polly, you might have toyed and kissed, by keeping men off, you keep them on.
• Cowards are cruel, but the brave love mercy and delight to save.
• An open foe may prove a curse, but a pretended friend is worse.
• 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.
• 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.
• Follow love and it will flee, flee love and it will follow thee.
• Fools may our scorn, not envy, raise. For envy is a kind of praise.
• Gamesters and highwaymen are generally very good to their whores, but they are very devils to their wives.
• I must have women - there is nothing unbends the mind like them.
• 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.
• No retreat. No retreat. They must conquer or die who've no retreat.