About John Gay: John Gay is best remembered for The Beggar's Opera (1728), a ballad opera. The characters, including Captain Macheath and Polly Peachum, became household names.
A man is always afraid of a woman that loves him too much
The comfortable estate of widowhood is the only hope that keeps up a wife's spirits.
On the choice of friends, Our good or evil name depends.
Follow love and it will flee, flee love and it will follow thee.
The brave love mercy, and delight to save.
Cowards are cruel, but the brave love mercy and delight to save.
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.
Those who in quarrels interpose, must often wipe a bloody nose.
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.
There is no dependence that can be sure but a dependence upon one's self.
Fools may our scorn, not envy, raise. For envy is a kind of praise.
An open foe may prove a curse, but a pretended friend is worse.
But his kiss was so sweet, and so closely he pressed, that I languished and pined till I granted the rest.
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.
Shadow owes its birth to light.
No retreat. No retreat. They must conquer or die who've no retreat.
She who has never loved has never lived.
Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand.
Gulliver was soon being read "from the cabinet council to the nursery".
O Polly, you might have toyed and kissed, by keeping men off, you keep them on.
