Happy the man, and happy he alone, he who can call today his own; he who, secure within, can say, tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
John DrydenI maintain, against the enemies of the stage, that patterns of piety, decently represented, may second the precepts.
John DrydenFortune, that with malicious joyDoes man her slave oppress,Proud of her office to destroy,Is seldom pleasd to bless.
John DrydenA farce is that in poetry which grotesque (caricature) is in painting. The persons and actions of a farce are all unnatural, and the manners false, that is, inconsistent with the characters of mankind; and grotesque painting is the just resemblance of this.
John DrydenIf one must be rejected, one succeed, make him my lord within whose faithful breast is fixed my image, and who loves me best.
John DrydenFiction is of the essence of poetry as well as of painting; there is a resemblance in one of human bodies, things, and actions which are not real, and in the other of a true story by fiction.
John DrydenWelcome, thou kind deceiver! Thou best of thieves; who, with an easy key, Dost open life, and, unperceived by us, Even steal us from ourselves.
John DrydenImagining is in itself the very height and life of poetry, which, by a kind of enthusiasm or extraordinary emotion of the soul, makes it seem to us that we behold those things which the poet paints.
John DrydenI feel my sinews slackened with the fright, and a cold sweat trills down all over my limbs, as if I were dissolving into water.
John DrydenNo government has ever been, or can ever be, wherein time-servers and blockheads will not be uppermost.
John DrydenDiscover the opinion of your enemies, which is commonly the truest; for they will give you no quarter, and allow nothing to complaisance.
John DrydenGood Heaven, whose darling attribute we find is boundless grace, and mercy to mankind, abhors the cruel.
John DrydenHe was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. . . . He was naturally learn'd; he needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature; he looked inwards, and found her there. . . . He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating in to clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when some occasion is presented to him.
John DrydenWhen I consider life, it is all a cheat. Yet fooled with hope, people favor this deceit.
John DrydenMen are but children of a larger growth, Our appetites as apt to change as theirs, And full as craving too, and full as vain.
John Dryden