John Dryden Quotes - Page 6

• John Dryden / Poet

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

• John Dryden / Poet

For all the happiness mankind can gain Is not in pleasure, but in rest from pain.

• John Dryden / Poet

Nor is the people's judgment always true: the most may err as grossly as the few.

• John Dryden / Poet

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

• John Dryden / Poet

Roused by the lash of his own stubborn tail our lion now will foreign foes assail.

• John Dryden / Poet

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

• John Dryden / Poet

The soft complaining flute, In dying notes, discovers The woes of hopeless lovers.

• John Dryden / Poet

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

• John Dryden / Poet

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

• John Dryden / Poet

The perverseness of my fate is such that he's not mine because he's mine too much.

• John Dryden / Poet

Riches cannot rescue from the grave, which claims alike the monarch and the slave.

• John Dryden / Poet

An hour will come, with pleasure to relate Your sorrows past, as benefits of Fate.

• John Dryden / Poet

Forgiveness to the injured does belong; but they ne'er pardon who have done wrong.

• John Dryden / Poet

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

• John Dryden / Poet

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

• John Dryden / Poet

I have a soul that like an ample shield Can take in all, and verge enough for more.

• John Dryden / Poet

He has not learned the first lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.

• John Dryden / Poet

Presence of mind and courage in distress, Are more than arrives to procure success?

• John Dryden / Poet

Fool, not to know that love endures no tie, And Jove but laughs at lovers' perjury.

• John Dryden / Poet

Take not away the life you cannot give: For all things have an equal right to live.

• John Dryden / Poet

Look around the inhabited world; how few know their own good, or knowing it, pursue.

• John Dryden / Poet

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

• John Dryden / Poet

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

• John Dryden / Poet

The fool of nature stood with stupid eyes And gaping mouth, that testified surprise.

• John Dryden / Poet

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

• John Dryden / Poet

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

• John Dryden / Poet

An horrible stillness first invades our ear, And in that silence we the tempest fear.

• John Dryden / Poet

But 'tis the talent of our English nation, Still to be plotting some new reformation.

• John Dryden / Poet

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

• John Dryden / Poet

Government itself at length must fall To nature's state, where all have right to all.

• John Dryden / Poet

The thought of being nothing after death is a burden insupportable to a virtuous man.

• John Dryden / Poet

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

• John Dryden / Poet

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

• John Dryden / Poet

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

• John Dryden / Poet

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

• John Dryden / Poet

Love reckons hours for months, and days for years; and every little absence is an age.

• John Dryden / Poet

Set all things in their own peculiar place, and know that order is the greatest grace.

• John Dryden / Poet

Luxurious kings are to their people lost, They live like drones, upon the public cost.

• John Dryden / Poet

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

• John Dryden / Poet

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

• John Dryden / Poet

Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide.

• John Dryden / Poet

Bets at first were fool-traps, where the wise like spiders lay in ambush for the flies.

• John Dryden / Poet

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

• John Dryden / Poet

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

• John Dryden / Poet

Heaven be thanked, we live in such an age, When no man dies for love, but on the stage.

• John Dryden / Poet

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

• John Dryden / Poet

But Shakespeare's magic could not copied be; Within that circle none durst walk but he.

• John Dryden / Poet

So the false spider, when her nets are spread, deep ambushed in her silent den does lie.

• John Dryden / Poet

When I consider life, it is all a cheat. Yet fooled with hope, people favor this deceit.

• John Dryden / Poet

But wild Ambition loves to slide, not stand, And Fortune's ice prefers to Virtue's land.