John Dryden - Man Quotes

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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.

John Dryden
Milton's Paradise Lost is admirable; but am I therefore bound to maintain, that there are no flats amongst his elevations, when it is evident he creeps along sometimes for above an hundred lines together? Cannot I admire the height of his invention, and the strength of his expression, without defending his antiquated words, and the perpetual harshness of their sound? It is as much commendation as a man can bear, to own him excellent; all beyond it is idolatry.

John Dryden
'Twas now the month in which the world began
(If March beheld the first created man):
And since the vernal equinox, the Sun,
In Aries, twelve degrees, or more, had run;
When casting up his eyes against the light,
Both month, and day, and hour, he measur'd right;
And told more truly than th' Ephemeris:
For Art may err, but Nature cannot miss.
Thus numbering times and seasons in his breast,
His second crowing the third hour confess'd.

John Dryden
She knows her man, and when you rant and swear,
Can draw you to her with a single hair.

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
Arms, and the man I sing, who, forced by Fate,
And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate,
Expell'd and exil'd, left the Trojan shore;
Long labours both by sea and land he bore.

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

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
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
Be juster, Heaven: such virtue punished thus, Will make us think that Chance rules all above, And shuffles, with a random hand, the Lots Which Man is forc'd to draw.

John Dryden
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
By education most have been misled;
So they believe, because they so were bred.
The priest continues what the nurse began,
And thus the child imposes on the man.

John Dryden
The unhappy man, who once has trail'd a pen, Lives not to please himself, but other men; Is always drudging, wastes his life and blood, Yet only eats and drinks what you think good.

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

John Dryden
Science distinguishes a Man of Honour from one of those Athletick Brutes whom undeservedly we call Heroes.

John Dryden
Nay, tho' our Atoms shou'd revolve by chance,
And matter leape into the former dance;
Tho' time our Life and motion cou'd restore,
And make our Bodies what they were before,
What gain to us wou'd all this bustle bring,
The new made man wou'd be another thing;
When once an interrupting pause is made,
That individual Being is decay'd.
We, who are dead and gone, shall bear no part
In all the pleasures, nor shall feel the smart,
Which to that other Mortal shall accrew,
Whom of our Matter Time shall mould anew.

John Dryden
He [Shakespeare] was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul.

John Dryden
I am as free as Nature first made man,
Ere the base laws of servitude began,
When wild in woods the noble savage ran.

John Dryden
A Heroick Poem, truly such, is undoubtedly the greatest Work which the Soul of Man is capable to perform.

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

John Dryden
Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child.

John Dryden
For granting we have sinned, and that the offence
Of man is made against Omnipotence,
Some price that bears proportion must be paid,
And infinite with infinite be weighed.

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

John Dryden