John Dryden Quotes

Swift was the race, but short the time to run.

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.

The people's prayer, the glad diviner's theme, The young men's vision, and the old men's dream!

So over violent, or over civil that every man with him was God or Devil.

For all have not the gift of martyrdom.

Fool that I was, upon my eagle's wings I bore this wren, till I was tired with soaring, and now he mounts above me.

From Harmony, from heav'nly Harmony. This universal Frame began.

Softly 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.

Let 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.

For 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.

The sooner you treat your son as a man, the sooner he will be one.

For age but tastes of pleasures youth devours.

Heroic poetry has ever been esteemed the greatest work of human nature.

Good sense and good nature are never separated; and good nature is the product of right reason.

Among our crimes oblivion may be set.

Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child.

He has not learned the first lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.

Jealousy is the jaundice of the soul.

Even kings but play; and when their part is done, some other, worse or better, mounts the throne.

None but the brave deserve the fair.

Shakespeare was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of the books to read nature; he looked inward, and found her there.

Him of the western dome, whose weighty sense Flows in fit words and heavenly eloquence.

Love works a different way in different minds, the fool it enlightens and the wise it blinds.

Our 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.

Our 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.

For your ignorance is the mother of your devotion to me.

The fool of nature stood with stupid eyes And gaping mouth, that testified surprise.

Drinking is the soldier's pleasure.

Never was patriot yet, but was a fool.

Old as I am, for ladies' love unfit, The power of beauty I remember yet.

Bets at first were fool-traps, where the wise like spiders lay in ambush for the flies.

What passion cannot music raise and quell!

Love is love's reward.

Happy the man, and happy he alone, he, who can call today his own.

Rhyme is the rock on which thou art to wreck.

…So 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

Thus, 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.

Three 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.

And plenty makes us poor.

Words are but pictures of our thoughts.

But wild Ambition loves to slide, not stand, And Fortune's ice prefers to Virtue's land.

Confidence is the feeling we have before knowing all the facts

Forgiveness to the injured does belong; but they ne'er pardon who have done wrong.

Repentance is but want of power to sin.

I am devilishly afraid, that's certain; but ... I'll sing, that I may seem valiant.

We by art unteach what Nature taught.

Arts and sciences in one and the same century have arrived at great perfection; and no wonder, since every age has a kind of universal genius, which inclines those that live in it to some particular studies; the work then, being pushed on by many hands, must go forward.

Beware the fury of a patient man.