John Dryden Quotes

344 Sourced Quotes

He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul.... He was naturally learn'd; he needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature; he looked inwards, and found her there.... He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating in to clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when some occasion is presented to him.

John Dryden
For those whom God to ruin has designed,
He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind.

John Dryden
One of our late great poets is sunk in his reputation, because he could never forgive any conceit which came in his way; but swept like a drag-net, great and small. There was plenty enough, but the dishes were ill-sorted; whole pyramids of sweetmeats, for boys and women; but little of solid meat for men.
Of Abraham Cowley

John Dryden
How easy it is to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! But how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave, without using any of those opprobrious terms! To spare the grossness of the names, and to do the thing yet more severely, is to draw a full face, and to make the nose and cheeks stand out, and yet not to employ any depth of shadowing.

John Dryden
Our vows are heard betimes! and Heaven takes care
To grant, before we can conclude the prayer:
Preventing angels met it half the way,
And sent us back to praise, who came to pray.

John Dryden
He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets, is only victory in him.
Of Ben Jonson

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

John Dryden
War seldom enters but where wealth allures.

John Dryden
But far more numerous was the herd of such,
Who think too little, and who talk too much.

John Dryden
From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
When nature underneath a heap
Of jarring atoms lay,
And could not heave her head,
The tuneful voice was heard from high,
'Arise, ye more than dead!'
Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry,
In order to their stations leap,
And Music's power obey.
From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
From harmony to harmony
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in Man.

John Dryden
How happy the lover,
How easy his chain,
How pleasing his pain,
How sweet to discover
He sighs not in vain.

John Dryden
Let those find fault whose wit's so very small,
They've need to show that they can think at all;
Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;
He who would search for pearls, must dive below.
Fops may have leave to level all they can;
As pigmies would be glad to lop a man.
Half-wits are fleas; so little and so light,
We scarce could know they live, but that they bite.

John Dryden
Oppose not rage while rage is in its force, but give it way awhile and let it waste.

John Dryden
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 judgement is a mere lottery.

John Dryden
Timotheus, to his breathing flute,
And sounding lyre,
Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.

John Dryden
Then Israel's monarch, after Heaven's own heart,
His vigorous warmth did, variously, impart
To wives and slaves: and, wide as his command,
Scattered his Maker's image through the land.

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

John Dryden
Your Cleopatra; Dolabella's Cleopatra; every man's Cleopatra.

John Dryden
A man so various, that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome;
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts, and nothing long;
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.

John Dryden
The people's prayer, the glad diviner's theme,
The young men's vision and the old men's dream!

John Dryden
In friendship false, implacable in hate,
Resolved to ruin or to rule the state.

John Dryden
The dial spoke not, but it made shrewd signs,
And pointed full upon the stroke of murder.

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

John Dryden
T' abhor the makers, and their laws approve,
Is to hate traitors and the treason love.

John Dryden
Wit will shine
Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line.

John Dryden
Since ev'ry 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.
Like pilgrims, to th' appointed place we tend;
The world's an inn, and death the journey's end.

John Dryden
Leave writing plays, and choose for thy command
Some peaceful province in acrostic land.
There thou mayst wings display and altars raise,
And torture one poor word ten thousand ways.

John Dryden
Freedom which in no other land will thrive,
Freedom an English subject's sole prerogative.

John Dryden
Of no distemper, of no blast he died,
But fell like autumn fruit that mellowed long —
Even wondered at, because he dropped no sooner.
Fate seemed to wind him up for fourscore years,
Yet freshly ran he on ten winters more;
Till like a clock worn out with eating time,
The wheels of weary life at last stood still.

John Dryden
An horrid stillness first invades the ear,
And in that silence we the tempest fear.

John Dryden