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To shoot at crows is powder flung away.

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
Crows
Flung
Powder
Crow
Shoot
Away

More quotes by John Gay

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The fly that sips treacle is lost in the sweets.
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Gamesters and highwaymen are generally very good to their whores, but they are very devils to their wives.
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In beauty faults conspicuous grow The smallest speck is seen on snow.
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[Gulliver was soon being read] from the cabinet council to the nursery.
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You can only be called a hypocrite if you judge others first.
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Breathe soft, ye winds! ye waves, in silence sleep!
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Envy's a sharper spur than pay: No author ever spar'd a brother Wits are gamecocks to one another.
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Nor love, not honor, wealth nor power, can give the heart a cheerful hour when health is lost. Be timely wise With health all taste of pleasure flies.
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Whence is thy learning? Hath thy toil O'er books consumed the midnight oil?
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No retreat. No retreat. They must conquer or die who've no retreat.
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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.
John Gay
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Envy's a sharper spur than pay.
John Gay
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She who has never lov'd, has never liv'd.
John Gay
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I must have women - there is nothing unbends the mind like them.
John Gay
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O Polly, you might have toyed and kissed, by keeping men off, you keep them on.
John Gay
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Envy is a kind of praise.
John Gay
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Fair is the marigold, for pottage meet.
John Gay
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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.
John Gay
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Fair is the kingcup that in meadow blows, Fair is the daisy that beside her grows.
John Gay
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Around the steel no tortur'd worm shall twine, No blood of living insect stain my line Let me, less cruel, cast the feather'd hook, With pliant rod athwart the pebbled brook, Silent along the mazy margin stray, And with the fur-wrought fly delude the prey.
John Gay