Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat. Samuel Johnson. Parody on Who rules oer freemen should himself be free, from Henry Brookes Earl of Essex. In Boswells Life of Johnson. (1784).
And the plain ox, That harmless, honest, guileless animal, In what has he offended? he whose toil, Patient and ever ready, clothes the land With all the pomp of harvest. ThomsonThe Seasons.