Edward Moore

Edward Moore (March 22, 1712 – March 1, 1757) was an English dramatist and miscellaneous writer, the son of a dissenting minister, born at Abingdon, Berkshire.

Quotes

• Time still, as he flies, brings increase to her truth,
  And gives to her mind what he steals from her youth.
  • "Song x" (c. 1750s), St. 4; (Poetical Works of Edward Moore, London: Cawthorn, 1797), p. 172

• But beauty has wings, and too hastily flies,
  And love, unrewarded, soon sickens and dies.
  • "Song xii" (c. 1750s), St. 3; (Poetical Works of Edward Moore, London: Cawthorn, 1797), p. 174.

Fables for the Female Sex (1744)

Fables for the Female Sex (London: R. Francklin, 1744)

• Can’t I another’s face commend,
  And to her virtues be a friend,
  But instantly your forehead lours,
  As if her merit lessen’d yours?
  • Fable ix: "The Farmer, the Spaniel, and the Cat", p. 55.

• The maid who modestly conceals
  Her beauties, while she hides, reveals;
  Give but a glimpse, and fancy draws
  Whate’er the Grecian Venus was.
  • Fable x: "The Spider and the Bee", p. 62.

• But from the hoop’s bewitching round,
  Her very shoe has power to wound.
  • Fable x: "The Spider and the Bee", p. 63.

The Gamester (1753)

• I'll tell thee what it [the world] says: it calls me a villain: a treacherous husband; a cruel father; a false brother; one lost to nature and her charities; or, to say all in one short word, it calls me—gamester.
  • Act ii, Sc. 1.

• I am rich beyond the dreams of avarice.
  • Act ii. Sc. 2.
  • Compare: "The potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice", Samuel Johnson, in Life of Johnson (Boswell). Vol. viii. Chap. ii.

• ’Tis now the summer of your youth: time has not cropt the roses from your cheek, though sorrow long has washed them.
  • Act iii. Sc. 4.

Misattributed

• Labour for his pains.
  • Attributed to Moore in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations and elsewhere, but actually from William Wilkie's "The Boy and the Rainbow", line 78, in his book Fables (London: Edward and Charles Dilly, 1768) , p. 45.
  • Compare: "I have had my labour for my travail", William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act i., Sc. !.

External links

• Works by Edward Moore at Project Gutenberg