John Dryden Quotes
-
Death in itself is nothing; but we fear to be we know not what, we know not where.
→ -
Sculptors are obliged to follow the manners of the painters, and to make many ample folds, which are unsufferable hardness, and more like a rock than a natural garment.
→ -
Maintain your post: That's all the fame you need; For 'tis impossible you should proceed.
→ -
If one must be rejected, one succeed, make him my lord within whose faithful breast is fixed my image, and who loves me best.
→ -
Go miser go, for money sell your soul. Trade wares for wares and trudge from pole to pole, So others may say when you are dead and gone. See what a vast estate he left his son.
→ -
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.
→ -
I learn to pity woes so like my own.
→ -
All heiresses are beautiful.
→ -
Presence of mind and courage in distress, Are more than arrives to procure success?
→ -
What precious drops are those, Which silently each other's track pursue, Bright as young diamonds in their faint dew?
→ -
Satire is a kind of poetry in which human vices are reprehended.
→ -
Virgil and Horace [were] the severest writers of the severest age.
→ -
Order is the greatest grace.
→ -
The longest tyranny that ever sway'd Was that wherein our ancestors betray'd Their free-born reason to the Stagirite [Aristotle], And made his torch their universal light. So truth, while only one suppli'd the state, Grew scarce, and dear, and yet sophisticate.
→ -
Freedom which in no other land will thrive, Freedom an English subject's sole prerogative.
→ -
Courage from hearts and not from numbers grows.
→ -
For age but tastes of pleasures youth devours.
→ -
What, start at this! when sixty years have spread. Their grey experience o'er thy hoary head? Is this the all observing age could gain? Or hast thou known the world so long in vain?
→ -
Doeg, though without knowing how or why, Made still a blundering kind of melody; Spurr'd boldly on, and dash'd through thick and thin, Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in; Free from all meaning whether good or bad, And in one word, heroically mad.
→ -
Politicians neither love nor hate.
→ -
Truth is never to be expected from authors whose understanding is warped with enthusiasm.
→ -
Beware of the fury of the patient man.
→ -
Thoughts cannot form themselves in words so horrid As can express my guilt.
→ -
For all have not the gift of martyrdom.
→ -
How happy the lover, How easy his chain, How pleasing his pain, How sweet to discover He sighs not in vain.
→ -
Present joys are more to flesh and blood Than a dull prospect of a distant good.
→ -
There is an inimitable grace in Virgil's words, and in them principally consists that beauty which gives so inexpressible a pleasure to him who best understands their force. This diction of his, I must once again say, is never to be copied; and since it cannot, he will appear but lame in the best translation.
→ -
Love and Time with reverence use, Treat them like a parting friend: Nor the golden gifts refuse Which in youth sincere they send: For each year their price is more, And they less simple than before.
→ -
If you have lived, take thankfully the past. Make, as you can, the sweet remembrance last.
→ -
Pains of love be sweeter far than all other pleasures are.
→