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The fly that sips treacle is lost in the sweets.

John Gay

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John Gay
Age: 47 †
Born: 1685
Born: June 30
Died: 1732
Died: December 4
Librettist
Playwright
Poet
Writer
Barnstaple
Devon
Sweet
Lost
Treacle
Sips
Sweets

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Do you think your mother and I should have lived comfortably so long together, if ever we had been married? Baggage!
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Envy is a kind of praise.
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What will not luxury taste? Earth, sea, and air, Are daily ransack'd for the bill of fare. Blood stuffed in skins is British Christians' food, And France robs marshes of the croaking brood.
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Why is the hearse with scutcheons blazon'd round, And with the nodding plume of ostrich crown'd? No the dead know it not, nor profit gain It only serves to prove the living vain.
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Can love be controll'd by advice?
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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?
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Man may escape from rope and gun Nay, some have outlived the doctor's pill: Who takes a woman must be undone, That basilisk is sure to kill. The fly that sips treacle is lost in the sweets, So he that tastes woman, woman, woman, He that tastes woman, ruin meets.
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Envy's a sharper spur than pay.
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Youth's the season made for joys, Love is then our duty.
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Who hath not heard the rich complain Of surfeits, and corporeal pain? He barr'd from every use of wealth, Envies the ploughman's strength and health.
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O Polly, you might have toyed and kissed, by keeping men off, you keep them on.
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A man is always afraid of a woman that loves him too much
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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.
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I cannot raise my worth too high Of what vast consequence am I! Not of the importance you suppose, Replies a Flea upon his nose Be humble, learn thyself to scan Know, pride was never made for man.
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Beasts kill for hunger, men for pay.
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Learning by study must be won 'Twas ne'er entail'd from son to son.
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To shoot at crows is powder flung away.
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In beauty faults conspicuous grow The smallest speck is seen on snow.
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Fair words cost nothing.
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[Gulliver was soon being read] from the cabinet council to the nursery.
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