John Dryden Quotes
Words are but pictures of our thoughts.
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!
Pains of love be sweeter far
Than all other pleasures are.
War is the trade of Kings.
Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own;
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have lived today.
There is a pleasure in being mad which none but madmen know.
Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought, but genius must be born; and never can be taught.
Shame on the body for breaking down while the spirit perseveres.
Forgiveness to the injured does belong; but they never pardon who have done wrong.
Second thoughts, they say, are best.
All heiresses are beautiful.
Farewell, too little, and too lately known,
Whom I began to think and call my own:
For sure our souls were near allied, and thine
Cast in the same poetic mold with mine.
One common note on either lyre did strike,
And knaves and fools we both abhorred alike.
To the same goal did both our studies drive;
The last set out the soonest did arrive.
Thus Nisus fell upon the slippery place,
While his young friend performed and won the race.
O early ripe! to thy abundant store
What could advancing age have added more?
It might (what nature never gives the young)
Have taught the numbers of thy native tongue.
But satire needs not those, and wit will shine
Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line.
A noble error, and but seldom made,
When poets are by too much force betrayed.
Thy generous fruits, though gathered ere their prime,
Still showed a quickness; and maturing time
But mellows what we write to the dull sweets of rhyme.
Once more, hail and farewell; farewell, thou young,
But ah too short, Marcellus of our tongue;
Thy brows with ivy, and with laurels bound;
But fate and gloomy night encompass thee around.
Successful crimes alone are justified.
By viewing Nature, Nature's handmaid Art,
Makes mighty things from small beginnings grow.
’Tis so much in your nature to do good that your life is but one continued act of placing benefits on many; as the sun is always carrying his light to some part or other of the world.
To die is landing on some distant shore.
Our physicians have observed that, in process of time, some diseases have abated of their virulence, and have, in a manner, worn out their malignity, so as to be no longer mortal.
Only man clogs his happiness with care, destroying what is with thoughts of what may be.
War, he sung, is toil and trouble;
Honour but an empty bubble;
Never ending, still beginning,
Fighting still, and still destroying.
If all the world be worth the winning,
Think, oh think it worth enjoying.
All objects lose by too familiar view.
Either be wholly slaves or wholly free.
Men are but children of a larger growth,
Our appetites as apt to change as theirs,
And full as craving too, and full as vain.
Love never fails to master what he finds,
But works a different way in different minds,
The fool enlightens, and the wise he blinds.
Jealousy is the jaundice of the soul.
I am as free as Nature first made man,
Ere the base laws of servitude began.
We must beat the iron while it is hot, but we may polish it at leisure.
For present joys are more to flesh and blood
Than a dull prospect of a distant good.
But love's a malady without a cure.
She feared no danger, for she knew no sin.
Sweet is pleasure after pain.
Calms appear, when Storms are past;
Love will have his Hour at last:
Nature is my kindly Care;
Mars destroys, and I repair;
Take me, take me, while you may,
Venus comes not every Day.
Love's the noblest frailty of the mind.
Fool that I was, upon my eagle's wings I bore this wren, till I was tired with soaring, and now he mounts above me.
Love is not in our choice but in our fate.
When I consider life, it is all a cheat. Yet fooled with hope, people favor this deceit.
Like a led victim, to my death I'll go,
And, dying, bless the hand that gave the blow.
Art may err, but Nature cannot miss.
Even victors are by victories undone.
All human things are subject to decay,
And when Fate summons, monarchs must obey.
But far more numerous was the herd of such,
Who think too little, and who talk too much.
For truth has such a face and such a mien, as to be loved needs only to be seen.
We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.
He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul.... He needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature; he looked inwards, and found her there.
None but the brave deserves the fair.
He has not learned the first lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.
This good had full as bad a Consequence:
The Book thus put in every vulgar hand,
Which each presum'd he best cou'd understand,
The Common Rule was made the common Prey;
And at the mercy of the Rabble lay.
The tender Page with horney Fists was gual'd;
And he was gifted most that loudest baul'd:
The Spirit gave the Doctoral Degree:
And every member of a Company
Was of his Trade, and of the Bible free.
Better to hunt in fields, for health unbought, Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught, The wise, for cure, on exercise depend; God never made his work for man to mend.
Ill habits gather unseen degrees, as brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.
Plots, true or false, are necessary things, To raise up commonwealths and ruin kings.
The sooner you treat your son as a man, the sooner he will be one.
Like pilgrims to the appointed place we tend;
The world's an inn, and death the journey's end.
Not heaven itself upon the past has power;
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.
Old as I am, for ladies' love unfit,
The power of beauty I remember yet.
Oh that my Pow'r to Saving were confin'd:
Why am I forc'd, like Heav'n, against my mind,
To make Examples of another Kind?
Must I at length the Sword of Justice draw?
Oh curst Effects of necessary Law!
How ill my Fear they by my Mercy scan,
Beware the Fury of a Patient Man.
Boldness is a mask for fear, however great.
They say everything in the world is good for something.
By education most have been misled; So they believe, because they were bred. The priest continues where the nurse began, And thus the child imposes on the man.
Ill fortune seldom comes alone.
Your love by ours we measure
Till we have lost our treasure,
But dying is a pleasure,
When living is a pain.
All have not the gift of martyrdom.
Self-defence is Nature's eldest law.
For they conquer who believe they can.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide.
Plenty makes us poor.
Of all the tyrannies on human kind
The worst is that which persecutes the mind.
Content with poverty, my soul I arm;
And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm.
With how much ease believe we what we wish!
Softly sweet in Lydian measures
Soon he soothed his soul to pleasures.
"War", he sung, 'is toil and trouble;
Honour but an empty bubble.
Never ending, still beginning,
Fighting still, and still destroying;
If the world be worth thy winning,
Think, O think it worth enjoying.
Lovely Thais sits beside thee,
Take the good the Gods provide thee.
War seldom enters but where wealth allures.
When beauty fires the blood, how love exalts the mind!
Death in itself is nothing; but we fear
To be we know not what, we know not where.
None are so busy as the fool and knave.
Is it not evident, in these last hundred years (when the Study of Philosophy has been the business of all the Virtuosi in Christendome) that almost a new Nature has been revealed to us? that more errours of the School have been detected, more useful Experiments in Philosophy have been made, more Noble Secrets in Opticks, Medicine, Anatomy, Astronomy, discover'd, than in all those credulous and doting Ages from Aristotle to us? So true it is that nothing spreads more fast than Science, when rightly and generally cultivated.
Tomorrow do thy worst, I have lived today.
Let grace and goodness be the principal loadstone of thy affections. For love which hath ends, will have an end; whereas that which is founded on true virtue, will always continue.
What passions cannot music raise or quell?
Beware the fury of a patient man.
Variant: Beware the anger of a patient man.
That, if the Gentiles, whom no Law inspired,
By Nature did what was by Law required;
They, who the written Rule and never known,
Were to themselves both Rule and Law alone:
To Natures plain Indictment they shall plead;
And, by their Conscience, be condemned or freed.
He who would search for pearls must dive below.
Possess your soul with patience.
So over violent, or over civil
That every man with him was God or Devil.
Chaucer followed Nature everywhere, but was never so bold to go beyond her.
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.
Since every man who lives is born to die,
And none can boast sincere felicity,
With equal mind, what happens, let us bear,
Nor joy, nor grieve too much for things beyond our care.
Reason is a crutch for age, but youth is strong enough to walk alone.
Genius must be born, and never can be taught.
Love is love's reward.
A man so various, that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome.
Look around the inhabited world; how few know their own good, or knowing it, pursue.
You see through love, and that deludes your sight, As what is straight seems crooked through the water.
