To turn from grave to gay. [ Horace ]
It is ever thus with happiness;
It is the gay tomorrow of the mind,
That never comes. [ Proctor ]
Virtue may be gay, yet with dignity. [ Statius ]
Fancy with prophetic glance
Sees the teeming months advance;
The field, the forest, green and gay;
The dappled slope, the tedded hay;
Sees the reddening orchard blow.
The harvest wave, the vintage flow. [ Warton ]
To contemplation's sober eye.
Such is the race of man;
And they that creep, and they that fly.
Shall end where they began.
Alike the busy and the gay,
But flutter through life's little day. [ Gray ]
All, that in this world is great or gay.
Doth, as a vapor, vanish and decay. [ Spenser ]
From grave to gay, from lively to severe. [ Pope ]
Happily to steer
From grave to gay, from lively to severe. [ Pope ]
Far from gay cities, and the ways of men. [ Homer ]
Sweet sleep be with us, one and all!
And if upon its stillness fall
The visions of a busy brain.
We'll have our pleasure over again.
To warm the heart, to charm the sight,
Gay dreams to all! good night, good night. [ Joanna Baillie ]
Soft without weakness; without glaring, gay. [ Pope ]
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew,
The buttercups, the little children's dower. [ Robert Browning ]
For wheresoever I turn my ravished eyes,
Gay gilded scenes and shining prospects rise,
Poetic fields encompass me around.
And still I seem to tread on classic ground. [ Addison ]
Can wealth give happiness? look round, and see
What gay distress! what splendid misery!
Whatever fortune lavishly can pour.
The mind annihilates, and calls for more. [ Young ]
Pride goeth forth on horseback, grand and gay,
But cometh back on foot, and begs its way. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
Oh! liberty, thou goddess, heavenly bright.
Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight!
Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign.
And smiling plenty, leads thy wanton train;
Eased of her load, subjection grows more light
And poverty looks cheerful in the sight;
Thou makest the gloomy face of nature gay,
Giv'st beauty to the sun, and pleasure to the day. [ Addison ]
The sorrowful dislike the gay, and the gay the sorrowful. [ Horace ]
No man is esteemed for gay garments but by fools and women. [ Sir Walter Raleigh ]
A merry old fool and a gay apish matron are domestic monsters. [ Proverb ]
Gay clothing is the happiness of children and the weakest women. [ Proverb ]
Wisdom itself is not ashamed to be sprightly and gay upon occasion. [ Proverb ]
Gay mellow silks her mellow charms infold, and nought of Lyce but herself is old. [ Young ]
A true knight is fuller of gay bravery in the midst than in the beginning of danger. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
Conspicuous with three listed colors gay, betokening peace from God, and covenant new. [ Milton ]
Beautiful as sweet! and young as beautiful! and soft as young! and gay as soft! and innocent as gay! [ Young ]
A man of sense and gravity is less apt to succeed with a fine woman than the gay, the giddy, the flattering coxcomb. [ Henry Home ]
A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give no peace. [ Emerson ]
Love delights in paradoxes. Saddest when it has most reason to be gay, sighs are the signs of its deepest joy, and silence the expression of its yearning tenderness. [ Bovee ]
The girl of the period sets up to be natural, and is only rude; mistakes insolence for innocence; says everything that comes first to her lips, and thinks she is gay when she is only giddy. [ Beaconsfield ]
Processions, cavalcades, and all that fund of gay frippery, furnished out by tailors, barbers, and tire-women, mechanically influence the mind into veneration; an emperor in his nightcap would not meet with half the respect of an emperor with a crown. [ Goldsmith ]
Flowers and fruits are always fit presents; flowers, because they are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty out-values all the utilities of the world. These gay natures contrast with the sombre countenance of ordinary nature; they are like music heard out of a workhouse. [ Berz ]
Good-humor, gay spirits, are the liberators, the sure cure for spleen and melancholy. Deeper than tears, these irradiate the tophets with their glad heavens. Go laugh, vent the pits, transmuting imps into angels by the alchemy of smiles. The satans flee at the sight of these redeemers. [ Alcott ]
The fact is, that of all God's gifts to the sight of man, color is the holiest, the most divine, the most solemn, We speak rashly of gay color and sad color, for color cannot at once be good and gay. All good color is in some degree pensive, the loveliest is melancholy, and the purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love color the most. [ Thomas Starr King ]
Mutability is the badge of infirmity; it is seldom that a man continues to wish and design the same thing two days alike; now he is for marrying, and now a mistress is preferred to a wife; now he is ambitious and aspiring, presently the meanest servant is not more humble than he; this hour he squanders his money away, the next he turns miser; sometimes he is frugal and serious, at other times profuse, airy, and gay. [ Charron ]