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All's lost both labour and cost.
You labour in vaine.
You seek a needle in a bottle of hay.
Make a rope of sand as soon.
Not worth the cost.
Ye poure water on a drown'd mouse.
Strive not against the streame—
Labour in vaine.
You bestow water on a gate-post.
You may gape long enough ere a bird fall in your mouth.
All you doe for him is put into a riven dish.
They run well but they have ill lucke.
Puff not against the wind.
You knock at a wrong doore.
You shall have that which the cat left in the mault heape.
Cast your cap at the moone.
Great paine and little gaine will make a man soone weary.
You'd as good beat your heeles against the ground
You burne day light.
Hee's overmatcht. Better sit still than —
You may save your labour.
Bid a churlish dog bite.
Here's a great deale of cry and little wooll, quoth the fellow when he shore his hogs.
Earely up and never the neare.
The moone shine i'th wa∣ter-pot.
Great paines to little pur∣pose.
You shall have your labour for your paines.
Great paines but all in vaine.
Great paines to little purpose.
It hangs together as pebles in a wyth.
One beates the bush, an∣other gets the bird.
Your cake is dough.
In at one eare and out of the other.
He looseth his longing.
'Tis folly to kicke against a pricke.
He is out of his element.
Better play for nothing than work for nothing.
Put up your pipes.
To lick his lips after that he cannot get.
You catch birds by laying salt on their tayles.
He that washeth an asses head loseth both his lye and his labour.
I doe what I can quoth the fellow when he thresht in 's cloake.
You poure water into a sieve.
You doe and undoe, the day's long enough.
To build castles in the aire.