Imagination in a poet is a faculty so wild and lawless that, like a high ranging spaniel, it must have clogs tied to it, lest it outrun the judgment. The great easiness of blank verse renders the poet too luxuriant. He is tempted to say many things which might better be omitted, or, at least shut up in fewer words.
John DrydenBut far more numerous was the herd of such, Who think too little, and who talk too much.
John DrydenErrors like straws upon the surface flow, Who would search for pearls to be grateful for often must dive below.
John DrydenOnly man clogs his happiness with care, destroying what is with thoughts of what may be.
John DrydenThe province of the soul is large enough to fill up every cranny of your time, and leave you much to answer for if one wretch be damned by your neglect.
John DrydenFortune's unjust; she ruins oft the brave, and him who should be victor, makes the slave.
John DrydenImitation pleases, because it affords matter for inquiring into the truth or falsehood of imitation, by comparing its likeness or unlikeness with the original.
John DrydenI'm a little wounded, but I am not slain; I will lay me down to bleed a while. Then I'll rise and fight again.
John DrydenWhat judgment I had increases rather than diminishes; and thoughts, such as they are, come crowding in so fast upon me, that my only difficulty is to choose or reject; to run them into verse or to give them the other harmony of prose.
John DrydenSome of our philosophizing divines have too much exalted the faculties of our souls, when they have maintained that by their force mankind has been able to find out God.
John DrydenIf by the people you understand the multitude, the hoi polloi, 'tis no matter what they think; they are sometimes in the right, sometimes in the wrong; their judgment is a mere lottery.
John DrydenThe good we have enjoyed from Heaven's free will, and shall we murmur to endure the ill?
John DrydenHe invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets is only victory in him.
John Dryden