Word.ws English Dictionary

take the cash and let the credit go

take the cash and let the credit go proverb: exploit and enjoy the opportunities and pleasures available here and now and do not invest effort pursuing prospective future gratifications.

Proverb

take the cash and let the credit go

  1. Exploit and enjoy the opportunities and pleasures available here and now and do not invest effort pursuing prospective future gratifications.
    • Some for the Glories of This World; and some / Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come; / Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go, / Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!1872, Omar Khayyam, translated by Edward FitzGerald, Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
    • "I will live my life, alone with the few people I find to my liking. I will take the cash and let the credit go."1898, Henry Harland, “Merely Players”, in Comedies and Errors, page 52

Examples of take the cash and let the credit go in a sentence

  • Why not "take the cash and let the credit go"?1913, Josiah Royce, in Introduction to The Foundations of Science by Henri Poincaré, authorized translation by George Bruce Halsted, (text...
  • He would have his followers take the cash and let the credit go—though the cash in this case is not the immediate pleasure but the immediate peace.1927, Irving Babbit, “Buddha and the Occident”, in On Literature, Cultures, and Religion, published 2006, →ISBN, page 251:
  • William Harding Johnson, $15,000-a-year superintendent of Chicago's school system, has been content to take the cash and let the credit go.1946 January 28, “Education: Violator”, in Time, retrieved 03 Aug 2014:
  • "Take the cash and let the credit go," as Villon said in 1460.1977, Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly (2011 edition), Author's Note (Google preview)

Synonyms of take the cash and let the credit go

Questions about take the cash and let the credit go

What does take the cash and let the credit go mean?
Take the cash and let the credit go means exploit and enjoy the opportunities and pleasures available here and now and do not invest effort pursuing prospective future gratifications.
How do you use take the cash and let the credit go in a sentence?
Why not "take the cash and let the credit go"?
What part of speech is take the cash and let the credit go?
Take the cash and let the credit go is a proverb.

Words near take the cash and let the credit go in the dictionary

  1. take the bitter with the sweet
  2. take the bread out of someone's mouth
  3. take the browns to the super bowl
  4. take the bull by the horns
  5. take the cake
  6. take the cash and let the credit go
  7. take the chair
  8. take the chill off
  9. take the Chiltern Hundreds
  10. take the cloth
  11. take the con

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: take the cash and let the credit go (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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