John Gay - biography

“Shadow owes its birth to light.”

“No retreat.  No retreat.  They must conquer or die who’ve no retreat.”

“An open foe may prove a curse, but a pretended friend is worse.”

“On the choice of friends, Our good or evil name depends.”

“The comfortable estate of widowhood is the only hope that keeps up a wife’s spirits.”

“Fools may our scorn, not envy, raise.  For envy is a kind of praise.”

“Follow love and it will flee, flee love and it will follow thee.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Cowards are cruel, but the brave love mercy and delight to save.”

“The brave love mercy, and delight to save.”

“I must have women - there is nothing unbends the mind like them.”

“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.”

“But his kiss was so sweet, and so closely he pressed, that I languished and pined till I granted the rest.”

“Gamesters and highwaymen are generally very good to their whores, but they are very devils to their wives.”

“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.”

“She who has never loved has never lived.”

“Tell me and I forget.  Show me and I remember.  Involve me and I understand.”

“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.”

John Gay contributed to the screenplay for the following films:
The Beggar’s Opera (1953)
Run Silent Run Deep (1958)
Separate Tables (1958)
Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)
The 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962)
The Happy Thieves (1962)
The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (1963)
The Hallelujah Trail (1965)
Texas Across the River (1966)
The Last Safari (1967)
No Way to Treat a Lady (1968)
The Power (1968)
Soldier Blue (1970)
Sometimes a Great Notion (1971)
Pocket Money (1972)
Hennessy (1975)
A Matter of Time (1976)
Golden Rendezvous (1977)