John Gay Quotes

A wolf eats sheep but now and then, ten Thousands are devour'd by Men.

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

But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send, Save me, oh, save me, from the candid friend!

It's hard for the same people who put you in the ditch to pull you out of it.

Why do we go around acting as though everything was friendship and reliability when basically everything everywhere is full of sudden hate and ugliness?

There's good and bad everywhere in any aspect in life. The only people who we can't really trust are politicians. Because those guys lie to everybody and constantly.

That's what the cat said to the canary when he swallowed him - 'You'll be all right.'

The thing I'm having a hard time with are the Christians who will stab you in the back in a wink.

People talk, talk, but when it's time to fight me, they all wanna hug me.

That had been a real problem for me in the past - meeting people that were opportunists, so I had a few bad experiences where I really believed people cared about me, but they didn't.

It is better to fall in with crows than with flatterers; for in the one case you are devoured when dead, in the other case while alive.

The treachery of a friend is worse than that of a foe.

In the grand scheme of nature, I believe that it is very natural that animals eat animals, and that humans eat animals. It is only in the last couple of decades that meat-processing factories have come to rise, and I believe we should take time to reflect on that reality.

There is an Italian proverb which saith, From my enemy let me defend myself; but from a pretensed friend Lord deliver me

Crocodiles are easy. They try to kill and eat you. People are harder. Sometimes they pretend to be your friend first.

This is what happens. You tell your friends your most personal secrets, and they use them against you.

The crow bewailes the sheepe, and then eates it.

It is often our best friends who throw us down.

The most disagreeable thing that your worst enemy says to your face does not approach what your best friends say behind your back.

Many undoubtedly owe their good fortune to the circumstance that they possess a pleasing smile with which they win hearts. Yet these hearts would do better to beware and to learn from Hamlet's tables that one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.

I hate a liar. Maybe because I'm such a good one myself, heh? Anyway, to find someone has told an out and out lie puts him on the other side of the fence from me for all time.

He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time.

Betrayals during war are childlike compared with our betrayals during peace.

It does the sheep no good to preach the goodness of a diet of grass, if the wolves are of a different mind.