Top 488 Quotes & Sayings by John Dryden - Page 4

And that the Scriptures, though not everywhere Free from corruption, or entire, or clear, Are uncorrupt, sufficient, clear, entire In all things which our needful faith require.

Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today: Be fair or foul or rain or shine, The joys I have possessed in spite of fate are mine. Not heaven itself upon the past has power; But what has been has been, and I have had my hour.

Among our crimes oblivion may be set.

Three poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpass'd; The next, in majesty; in both the last. The force of Nature could no further go; To make a third, she join'd the former two.

He was exhaled; his great Creator drew His spirit, as the sun the morning dew.

Hushed as midnight silence.

And write whatever Time shall bring to pass With pens of adamant on plates of brass.

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.

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

Plots, true or false, are necessary things, To raise up commonwealths and ruin kings.

None are so busy as the fool and the knave.

As one that neither seeks, nor shuns his foe.

If 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.

There's a proud modesty in merit; averse from asking, and resolved to pay ten times the gifts it asks.

All authors to their own defects are blind.

Joy rul'd the day, and Love the night.

They first condemn that first advised the ill.

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.

There is a proud modesty in merit.

For age but tastes of pleasures youth devours.

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.

Keen appetite And quick digestion wait on you and yours.

Railing and praising were his usual themes; and both showed his judgment in extremes. Either over violent or over civil, so everyone to him was either god or devil.

Sweet is pleasure after pain.

Shakespeare was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets;Jonson was theVirgil, the pattern of elaborate writing; I admire him, but I love Shakespeare.

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

Revenge, revenge, Timotheus cries, See the Furies arise!

They think too little who talk too much.

Fowls, by winter forced, forsake the floods, and wing their hasty flight to happier lands.

We find few historians who have been diligent enough in their search for truth; it is their common method to take on trust what they help distribute to the public; by which means a falsehood once received from a famed writer becomes traditional to posterity.

What I have left is from my native spring; I've still a heart that swells, in scorn of fate, And lifts me to my banks.

Deathless laurel is the victor's due.

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

They live too long who happiness outlive.

Truth is the foundation of all knowledge and the cement of all societies.

Fame then was cheap, and the first comer sped; And they have kept it since by being dead.

He made all countries where he came his own.

Lucky men are favorites of Heaven.

Virtue is her own reward.

Virgil and Horace [were] the severest writers of the severest age.

Order is the greatest grace.

Farewell, too little, and too lately known, Whom I began to think and call my own.

Dreams are but interludes, which fancy makes; When monarch reason sleeps, this mimic wakes.

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.

But when to sin our biased nature leans, The careful Devil is still at hand with means; And providently pimps for ill desires.

O freedom, first delight of human kind!

At home the hateful names of parties cease, And factious souls are wearied into peace.

If all the world be worth thy winning. / Think, oh think it worth enjoying: / Lovely Thaïs sits beside thee, / Take the good the gods provide thee.

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.

But how can finite grasp Infinity?

Satire among the Romans, but not among the Greeks, was a bitter invective poem.

The winds are out of breath.

The trumpet's loud clangor Excites us to arms.

For those whom God to ruin has design'd, He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind.

Fiction is of the essence of poetry as well as of painting; there is a resemblance in one of human bodies, things, and actions which are not real, and in the other of a true story by fiction.

Swift was the race, but short the time to run.

All, as they say, that glitters is not gold.

Ah, how sweet it is to love! Ah, how gay is young Desire! And what pleasing pains we prove When we first approach Love's fire!

If you have lived, take thankfully the past. Make, as you can, the sweet remembrance last.

He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets is only victory in him.