John Dryden Quotes

The fortitude of a Christian consists in patience, not in enterprises which the poets call heroic, and which are commonly the effects of interest, pride and worldly honor.

And nobler is a limited command, Given by the love of all your native land, Than a successive title, long and dark, Drawn from the mouldy rolls of Noah's Ark.

We by art unteach what Nature taught.

A man is to be cheated into passion, but to be reasoned into truth.

Good Heaven, whose darling attribute we find is boundless grace, and mercy to mankind, abhors the cruel.

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?

I never saw any good that came of telling truth.

Freedom which in no other land will thrive, Freedom an English subject's sole prerogative.

If passion rules, how weak does reason prove!

No king nor nation one moment can retard the appointed hour.

I feel my sinews slackened with the fright, and a cold sweat trills down all over my limbs, as if I were dissolving into water.

So softly death succeeded life in her, She did but dream of heaven, and she was there.

For mysterious things of faith, rely on the proponent, Heaven's authority.

Time and death shall depart and say in flying Love has found out a way to live, by dying.

The love of liberty with life is given, And life itself the inferior gift of Heaven.

Present joys are more to flesh and blood Than a dull prospect of a distant good.

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.

All heiresses are beautiful.

A lively faith will bear aloft the mind, and leave the luggage of good works behind.

Content with poverty, my soul I arm; And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm.

Never was patriot yet, but was a fool.

All delays are dangerous in war.

The bravest men are subject most to chance.

The good we have enjoyed from Heaven's free will, and shall we murmur to endure the ill?

Men's virtues I have commended as freely as I have taxed their crimes.

These are the effects of doting age,--vain doubts and idle cares and over caution.

The propriety of thoughts and words, which are the hidden beauties of a play, are but confusedly judged in the vehemence of action.

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

not judging truth to be in nature better than falsehood, but setting a value upon both according to interest.

All the learn'd are cowards by profession.

Fortune's unjust; she ruins oft the brave, and him who should be victor, makes the slave.

New vows to plight, and plighted vows to break.

If we from wealth to poverty descend, Want gives to know the flatterer from the friend.

I maintain, against the enemies of the stage, that patterns of piety, decently represented, may second the precepts.

Death only this mysterious truth unfolds, The mighty soul how small a body holds.

How easy 'tis, when Destiny proves kind, With full-spread sails to run before the wind!

An ugly woman in a rich habit set out with jewels nothing can become.

By viewing nature, nature's handmaid art, Makes mighty things from small beginnings grow: Thus fishes first to shipping did impart, Their tail the rudder, and their head the prow.

Music is inarticulate poesy.

The brave man seeks not popular applause, Nor, overpower'd with arms, deserts his cause; Unsham'd, though foil'd, he does the best he can, Force is of brutes, but honor is of man.

Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well; the chiefest part of which is to observe those excellencies which delight a reasonable reader.

I am resolved to grow fat and look young till forty, and then slip out of the world with the first wrinkle and the reputation of five-and-twenty.

With how much ease believe we what we wish!

Not to ask is not be denied.

To take up half on trust, and half to try, Name it not faith but bungling bigotry.

He who trusts a secret to his servant makes his own man his master.

Imitators are but a servile kind of cattle.

Whistling to keep myself from being afraid.

For danger levels man and brute And all are fellows in their need.

Maintain your post: That's all the fame you need; For 'tis impossible you should proceed.