John Dryden Quotes

344 Sourced Quotes

Maintain your post: That's all the fame you need; For 'tis impossible you should proceed.

John Dryden
The propriety of thoughts and words, which are the hidden beauties of a play, are but confusedly judged in the vehemence of action.

John Dryden
Men's virtues I have commended as freely as I have taxed their crimes.

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

John Dryden
The sun was enter'd into Capricorn; Which, by their bad astronomer's account, That week the Virgin Balance should remount.

John Dryden
Happy the man, who studying Nature's laws, Through known effects can trace the secret cause — His mind, possessing in a quiet state, Fearless of fortune and resigned to fate.

John Dryden
My heart's so full of joy, That I shall do some wild extravagance Of love in public; and the foolish world, Which knows not tenderness, will think me mad.

John Dryden
The gods, (if gods to goodness are inclined If acts of mercy touch their heavenly mind), And, more than all the gods, your generous heart, Conscious of worth, requite its own desert!

John Dryden
The monarch oak, the patriarch of the trees, Shoots rising up, and spreads by slow degrees. Three centuries he grows, and three he stays Supreme in state; and in three more decays.

John Dryden
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
To tame the proud, the fetter'd slave to free,
These are imperial arts.

John Dryden
For mysterious things of faith, rely on the proponent, Heaven's authority.

John Dryden
A woman's counsel brought us first to woe,
And made her man his paradise forego,
Where at heart's ease he liv'd; and might have been
As free from sorrow as he was from sin.

John Dryden
Science perfects genius; and also moderates that fury of the fancy which cannot contain itself within the bounds of reason; but often carries a man into dangerous extremes.

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

John Dryden
Who thinks all Science, as all Virtue, vain; Who counts Geometry and numbers Toys...

John Dryden
Having mourned your sin, for outward Eden lost, find paradise within.

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

John Dryden
Virgil, above all poets, had a stock which I may call almost inexhaustible, of figurative, elegant, and sounding words.

John Dryden
Death ends our woes, and the kind grave shuts up the mournful scene.

John Dryden
Affability, mildness, tenderness, and a word which I would fain bring back to its original signification of virtue,--I mean good-nature,--are of daily use; they are the bread of mankind and staff of life.

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

John Dryden
In pious times, ere priestcraft did begin,
Before polygamy was made a sin.

John Dryden
Love is a child that talks in broken language, yet then he speaks most plain.

John Dryden
Pleasure never comes sincere to man; but lent by heaven upon hard usury.

John Dryden
Thou spring'st a leak already in thy crown, A flaw is in thy ill-bak'd vessel found; 'Tis hollow, and returns a jarring sound, Yet thy moist clay is pliant to command, Unwrought, and easy to the potter's hand: Now take the mould; now bend thy mind to feel The first sharp motions of the forming wheel.

John Dryden
Prodigious actions may as well be done, by weaver's issue, as the prince's son.

John Dryden
The brave man seeks not popular applause, Nor, overpower'd with arms, deserts his cause; Unsham'd, though foil'd, he does the best he can, Force is of brutes, but honor is of man.

John Dryden
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
Virtue in distress, and vice in triumph make atheists of mankind.

John Dryden