Top 100 John Dryden Sayings
#1. Immortal honour, endless fame, Attend the Almighty Father's name: The Saviour Son be glorified, Who for lost man's redemption died; And equal adoration be, Eternal Paraclete, to Thee. Amen. - RABANUS MAURUS (9TH C.); TRANSLATED BY JOHN DRYDEN (1631
David P. Gushee
#2. gloomy, pensive, discontented temper This melancholy flatters, but unmans you; What is it else but penury of soul, A lazy frost, a numbness of the mind? - JOHN DRYDEN AT
Henry Hitchings
#3. If one must be rejected, one succeed, make him my lord within whose faithful breast is fixed my image, and who loves me best.
John Dryden
#4. Rhyme is the rock on which thou art to wreck.
John Dryden
#5. Be secret and discreet; the fairy favors are lost when not concealed.
John Dryden
#7. He who proposes to be an author should first be a student.
John Dryden
#8. Ill writers are usually the sharpest censors.
John Dryden
#9. Fattened in vice, so callous and so gross, he sins and sees not, senseless of his loss.
John Dryden
#10. The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves.
John Dryden
#12. Love works a different way in different minds, the fool it enlightens and the wise it blinds.
John Dryden
#13. A 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 Dryden
#14. One of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems which either this age or nation has produced.
John Dryden
#15. He look'd in years, yet in his years were seen A youthful vigor, and autumnal green.
John Dryden
#16. When we view elevated ideas of Nature, the result of that view is admiration, which is always the cause of pleasure.
John Dryden
#17. And that one hunting, which the Devil design'd For one fair female, lost him half the kind.
John Dryden
#18. Seek not to know what must not be reveal, for joy only flows where fate is most concealed. A busy person would find their sorrows much more; if future fortunes were known before!
John Dryden
#19. Discover the opinion of your enemies, which is commonly the truest; for they will give you no quarter, and allow nothing to complaisance.
John Dryden
#22. Mankind is ever the same, and nothing lost out of nature, though everything is altered.
John Dryden
#23. Him of the western dome, whose weighty sense Flows in fit words and heavenly eloquence.
John Dryden
#24. For all have not the gift of martyrdom.
John Dryden
#26. To take up half on trust, and half to try, Name it not faith but bungling bigotry.
John Dryden
#27. All things are subject to decay and when fate summons, monarchs must obey.
John Dryden
#28. The scum that rises upmost, when the nation boils.
John Dryden
#29. Only man clogs his happiness with care, destroying what is with thoughts of what may be.
John Dryden
#30. But when to sin our biased nature leans, The careful Devil is still at hand with means; And providently pimps for ill desires.
John Dryden
#31. O freedom, first delight of human kind!
John Dryden
#33. Love either finds equality or makes it.
John Dryden
#34. Of all the tyrannies on human kind the worst is that which persecutes the mind.
John Dryden
#35. For every inch that is not fool, is rogue.
John Dryden
#36. Ill news is wing'd with fate, and flies apace.
John Dryden
#40. Imagining 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 Dryden
#41. When beauty fires the blood, how love exalts the mind!
John Dryden
#42. Night came, but unattended with repose.
Alone she came, no sleep their eyes to close.
Alone and black she came; no friendly stars arose.
John Dryden
#43. The elephant is never won by anger; nor must that man who would reclaim a lion take him by the teeth.
John Dryden
#44. He wants worth who dares not praise a foe.
John Dryden
#45. The secret pleasure of a generous act Is the great mind's great bribe.
John Dryden
#46. While I am compassed round With mirth, my soul lies hid in shades of grief, Whence, like the bird of night, with half-shut eyes, She peeps, and sickens at the sight of day.
John Dryden
#47. No king nor nation one moment can retard the appointed hour.
John Dryden
#48. words are but pictures of our thoughts
John Dryden
#49. If you are for a merry jaunt, I will try, for once, who can foot it farthest.
John Dryden
#50. Thoughts cannot form themselves in words so horrid As can express my guilt.
John Dryden
#51. For lawful power is still superior found, When long driven back, at length it stands the ground.
John Dryden
#52. As one that neither seeks, nor shuns his foe.
John Dryden
#53. Great wits are to madness near allied
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.
John Dryden
#54. Either be wholly slaves or wholly free.
John Dryden
#55. The poorest of the sex have still an itch To know their fortunes, equal to the rich. The dairy-maid inquires, if she shall take The trusty tailor, and the cook forsake.
John Dryden
#56. Repentance is the virtue of weak minds.
John Dryden
#57. Pains of love be sweeter far than all other pleasures are.
John Dryden
#58. Good Heaven, whose darling attribute we find is boundless grace, and mercy to mankind, abhors the cruel.
John Dryden
#60. Wit will shine Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line.
John Dryden
#61. Genius must be born, it can't be taught.
John Dryden
#62. My whole life Has been a golden dream of love and friendship.
John Dryden
#63. The good we have enjoyed from Heaven's free will, and shall we murmur to endure the ill?
John Dryden
#64. 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.
John Dryden
#65. And he, who servilely creeps after sense, Is safe, but ne'er will reach an excellence.
John Dryden
#66. Like pilgrims to th' appointed place we tend;
The World's an Inn, and Death the journey's end.
John Dryden
#67. He with a graceful pride, While his rider every hand survey'd, Sprung loose, and flew into an escapade; Not moving forward, yet with every bound Pressing, and seeming still to quit his ground.
John Dryden
#68. Let Fortune empty her whole quiver on me, I have a soul that, like an ample shield, Can take in all, and verge enough for more; Fate was not mine, nor am I Fate's: Souls know no conquerors.
John Dryden
#69. Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child.
John Dryden
#70. Men's virtues I have commended as freely as I have taxed their crimes.
John Dryden
#71. Interest makes all seem reason that leads to it.
John Dryden
#73. Fortune, that with malicious joyDoes man her slave oppress,Proud of her office to destroy,Is seldom pleasd to bless.
John Dryden
#74. Ye moon and stars, bear witness to the truth.
John Dryden
#75. I trade both with the living and the dead, for the enrichment of our native language.
John Dryden
#76. A good conscience is a port which is landlocked on every side, where no winds can possibly invade. There a man may not only see his own image, but that of his Maker, clearly reflected from the undisturbed waters.
John Dryden
#77. Thus all below is strength, and all above is grace.
John Dryden
#79. They think too little who talk too much.
John Dryden
#80. If others in the same Glass better see
'Tis for Themselves they look, but not for me:
For my Salvation must its Doom receive
Not from what others, but what I believe.
John Dryden
#81. A fiery soul, which, working out its way, Fretted the pygmy-body to decay, And o'er-inform'd the tenement of clay. A daring pilot in extremity; Pleas'd with the danger, when the waves went high He sought the storms.
John Dryden
#82. Death in itself is nothing; but we fear.
To be we know not what, we know not where.
John Dryden
#83. He trudged along unknowing what he sought, And whistled as he went, for want of thought.
John Dryden
#84. Restless at home, and ever prone to range.
John Dryden
#85. For what can power give more than food and drink, To live at ease, and not be bound to think?
John Dryden
#86. Love is a passion which kindles honor into noble acts.
John Dryden
#87. Parting is worse than death; it is death of love!
John Dryden
#88. I am devilishly afraid, that's certain; but ... I'll sing, that I may seem valiant.
John Dryden
#89. Great souls forgive not injuries till time has put their enemies within their power, that they may show forgiveness is their own.
John Dryden
#90. Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease.
John Dryden
#91. A man is to be cheated into passion, but to be reasoned into truth.
John Dryden
#92. For your ignorance is the mother of your devotion to me.
John Dryden
#94. Light sufferings give us leisure to complain.
John Dryden
#95. 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.
John Dryden
#96. What passion cannot music raise and quell!
John Dryden
#97. She feared no danger, for she knew no sin.
John Dryden
#98. How happy the lover,
How easy his chain,
How pleasing his pain,
How sweet to discover
He sighs not in vain.
John Dryden
#99. He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets is only victory in him.
John Dryden
#100. When I consider life, it is all a cheat. Yet fooled with hope, people favor this deceit.
John Dryden
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