Affability, mildness, tenderness, and a word which I would fain bring back to its original signification of virtue,--I mean good-nature,--are of daily use; they are the bread of mankind and staff of life.
John DrydenThe people's prayer, the glad diviner's theme, The young men's vision, and the old men's dream!
John DrydenFool that I was, upon my eagle's wings I bore this wren, till I was tired with soaring, and now he mounts above me.
John DrydenSoftly sweet, in Lydian measures, Soon he sooth'd his soul to pleasures. War, he sung, is toil and trouble; Honour but an empty bubble; Never ending, still beginning, Fighting still, and still destroying. If all the world be worth the winning, Think, oh think it worth enjoying: Lovely Thais sits beside thee, Take the good the gods provide thee.
John DrydenLet grace and goodness be the principal loadstone of thy affections. For love which hath ends, will have an end; whereas that which is founded on true virtue, will always continue.
John DrydenFor my part, I can compare her (a gossip) to nothing but the sun; for, like him, she knows no rest, nor ever sets in one place but to rise in another.
John DrydenGood sense and good nature are never separated; and good nature is the product of right reason.
John DrydenEven kings but play; and when their part is done, some other, worse or better, mounts the throne.
John DrydenShakespeare was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of the books to read nature; he looked inward, and found her there.
John DrydenLove works a different way in different minds, the fool it enlightens and the wise it blinds.
John DrydenOur vows are heard betimes! and Heaven takes care To grant, before we can conclude the prayer: Preventing angels met it half the way, And sent us back to praise, who came to pray.
John DrydenOur souls sit close and silently within, And their own web from their own entrails spin; And when eyes meet far off, our sense is such, That, spider-like, we feel the tenderest touch.
John DrydenโฆSo when the last and dreadful hour This crumbling pageant shall devour, The trumpet shall be heard on high, The dead shall live, the living die, And Music shall untune the sky
John DrydenThus, while the mute creation downward bend Their sight, and to their earthly mother ten, Man looks aloft; and with erected eyes Beholds his own hereditary skies.
John DrydenThree poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpass'd; The next, in majesty; in both the last. The force of Nature could no further go; To make a third, she join'd the former two.
John DrydenBut wild Ambition loves to slide, not stand, And Fortune's ice prefers to Virtue's land.
John Dryden