Top 100 Quotes About Dryden

#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. 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

#3. Rhyme is the rock on which thou art to wreck.

John Dryden

#4. Be secret and discreet; the fairy favors are lost when not concealed.

John Dryden

#5. Hushed as midnight silence.

John Dryden

#6. He who proposes to be an author should first be a student.

John Dryden

#7. Ill writers are usually the sharpest censors.

John Dryden

#8. Fattened in vice, so callous and so gross, he sins and sees not, senseless of his loss.

John Dryden

#9. The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves.

John Dryden

#10. Drinking is the soldier's pleasure.

John Dryden

#11. Love works a different way in different minds, the fool it enlightens and the wise it blinds.

John Dryden

#12. 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

#13. One of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems which either this age or nation has produced.

John Dryden

#14. He look'd in years, yet in his years were seen A youthful vigor, and autumnal green.

John Dryden

#15. When we view elevated ideas of Nature, the result of that view is admiration, which is always the cause of pleasure.

John Dryden

#16. And that one hunting, which the Devil design'd For one fair female, lost him half the kind.

John Dryden

#17. 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

#18. 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

#19. All heiresses are beautiful.

John Dryden

#20. I kept going to different colleges, but dropped out.

Spencer Dryden

#21. A professional man of letters, especially if he is much at war with unscrupulous enenemies, is naturally jealous of his privacy ... so it was, I think, with Dryden.

Walter Raleigh

#22. Not to ask is not be denied.

John Dryden

#23. Mankind is ever the same, and nothing lost out of nature, though everything is altered.

John Dryden

#24. Him of the western dome, whose weighty sense Flows in fit words and heavenly eloquence.

John Dryden

#25. For all have not the gift of martyrdom.

John Dryden

#26. War is the trade of Kings.

John Dryden

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

John Dryden

#28. All things are subject to decay and when fate summons, monarchs must obey.

John Dryden

#29. The scum that rises upmost, when the nation boils.

John Dryden

#30. Thou shalt believe in Milton, Dryden, Pope;
Thou shalt not set up Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey;
Because the first is crazed beyond all hope,
The second drunk, the third so quaint and mouthy.

George Gordon Byron

#31. Only man clogs his happiness with care, destroying what is with thoughts of what may be.

John Dryden

#32. 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

#33. O freedom, first delight of human kind!

John Dryden

#34. Second thoughts, they say, are best.

John Dryden

#35. Love either finds equality or makes it.

John Dryden

#36. Of all the tyrannies on human kind the worst is that which persecutes the mind.

John Dryden

#37. For every inch that is not fool, is rogue.

John Dryden

#38. Ill news is wing'd with fate, and flies apace.

John Dryden

#39. Self-defence is Nature's eldest law.

John Dryden

#40. Secret guilt by silence is betrayed.

John Dryden

#41. Honor is but an empty bubble.

John Dryden

#42. 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

#43. When beauty fires the blood, how love exalts the mind!

John Dryden

#44. 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

#45. The elephant is never won by anger; nor must that man who would reclaim a lion take him by the teeth.

John Dryden

#46. He wants worth who dares not praise a foe.

John Dryden

#47. The secret pleasure of a generous act Is the great mind's great bribe.

John Dryden

#48. 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

#49. Two arguing geeks were stoppable. Three arguing geeks created an infinite argument vortex of doom that sucked time down like a black hole.

Delphine Dryden

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

John Dryden

#51. words are but pictures of our thoughts

John Dryden

#52. If you are for a merry jaunt, I will try, for once, who can foot it farthest.

John Dryden

#53. Thoughts cannot form themselves in words so horrid As can express my guilt.

John Dryden

#54. For lawful power is still superior found, When long driven back, at length it stands the ground.

John Dryden

#55. As one that neither seeks, nor shuns his foe.

John Dryden

#56. Great wits are to madness near allied
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.

John Dryden

#57. Either be wholly slaves or wholly free.

John Dryden

#58. 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

#59. Repentance is the virtue of weak minds.

John Dryden

#60. Pains of love be sweeter far than all other pleasures are.

John Dryden

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

John Dryden

#62. Sweet is pleasure after pain.

John Dryden

#63. Wit will shine Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line.

John Dryden

#64. Genius must be born, it can't be taught.

John Dryden

#65. My whole life Has been a golden dream of love and friendship.

John Dryden

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

John Dryden

#67. 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

#68. And he, who servilely creeps after sense, Is safe, but ne'er will reach an excellence.

John Dryden

#69. Like pilgrims to th' appointed place we tend;
The World's an Inn, and Death the journey's end.

John Dryden

#70. Making love - having sex - with James had been like discovering a lie of omission. She had become more aware of things because of their pronounced absence.

Delphine Dryden

#71. 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

#72. 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

#73. Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child.

John Dryden

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

John Dryden

#75. Interest makes all seem reason that leads to it.

John Dryden

#76. None but the brave deserve the fair.

John Dryden

#77. Fortune, that with malicious joyDoes man her slave oppress,Proud of her office to destroy,Is seldom pleasd to bless.

John Dryden

#78. Ye moon and stars, bear witness to the truth.

John Dryden

#79. I trade both with the living and the dead, for the enrichment of our native language.

John Dryden

#80. 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

#81. Thus all below is strength, and all above is grace.

John Dryden

#82. Pride - Lord of human kind

John Dryden

#83. They think too little who talk too much.

John Dryden

#84. 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

#85. 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

#86. Death in itself is nothing; but we fear.
To be we know not what, we know not where.

John Dryden

#87. He trudged along unknowing what he sought, And whistled as he went, for want of thought.

John Dryden

#88. Restless at home, and ever prone to range.

John Dryden

#89. For what can power give more than food and drink, To live at ease, and not be bound to think?

John Dryden

#90. Love is a passion which kindles honor into noble acts.

John Dryden

#91. Parting is worse than death; it is death of love!

John Dryden

#92. I am devilishly afraid, that's certain; but ... I'll sing, that I may seem valiant.

John Dryden

#93. Great souls forgive not injuries till time has put their enemies within their power, that they may show forgiveness is their own.

John Dryden

#94. Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease.

John Dryden

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

John Dryden

#96. For your ignorance is the mother of your devotion to me.

John Dryden

#97. By education most have been misled.

John Dryden

#98. Light sufferings give us leisure to complain.

John Dryden

#99. 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

#100. What passion cannot music raise and quell!

John Dryden

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