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John Dryden
470 quotes
“He's somewhat lewd; but a well-meaning mind; Weeps much; fights little; but is wond'rous kind.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A brave man scorns to quarrel once a day; Like Hectors in at every petty fray.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Give, you gods, Give to your boy, your Caesar, The rattle of a globe to play withal, This gewgaw world, and put him cheaply off; I'll not be pleased with less than Cleopatra.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The wretched have no friends.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“With how much ease believe we what we wish!”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whatever is, is in its causes just.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“His hair just grizzled, As in a green old age.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She, though in full-blown flower of glorious beauty, Grows cold even in the summer of her age.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is almost impossible to translate verbally and well at the same time; for the Latin (a most severe and compendious language) often expresses that in one word which either the barbarity or the narrowness of modern tongues cannot supply in more. ... But since every language is so full of its own proprieties that what is beautiful in one is often barbarous, nay, sometimes nonsense, in another, it would be unreasonable to limit a translator to the narrow compass of his author's words; it is enough if he choose out some expression which does not vitiate the sense.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is a pleasure sure In being mad which none but madmen know.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Lord of humankind.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Like a led victim, to my death I'll go, And, dying, bless the hand that gave the blow.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Second thoughts, they say, are best.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He's a sure card.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They say everything in the world is good for something.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As sure as a gun.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nor can his blessed soul look down from heaven, Or break the eternal sabbath of his rest.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whate’er he did, was done with so much ease, In him alone 'twas natural to please.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Plots, true or false, are necessary things, To raise up commonwealths and ruin kings.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And all to leave, what with his toil he won To that unfeathered two-legged thing, a son.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In friendship false, implacable in hate, Resolved to ruin, or to rule the state.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And heaven had wanted one immortal song. But wild ambition loves to slide, not stand, And fortune's ice prefers to virtue's land.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The people's prayer, the glad diviner's theme, The young men's vision, and the old men's dream!”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All empire is no more than power in trust.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Better one suffer, than a nation grieve.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Self-defence is nature's eldest law”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Not only hating David, but the king.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But far more numerous was the herd of such, Who think too little, and who talk too much.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A man so various, that he seem’d 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 (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every man with him was God or devil.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“His tribe were God Almighty's gentlemen.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thus in a pageant-show a plot is made; And peace itself is war in masquerade.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nor is the people's judgment always true: The most may err as grossly as the few.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Never was patriot yet, but was a fool.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beware the fury of a patient man.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) first seen 1005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Pt. I, l. 1005
“Made still a blund'ring kind of melody; Spurred boldly on, and dashed through thick and thin, Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in. Free from all meaning, whether good or bad, And in one word, heroically mad.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All human things are subject to decay, And, when fate summons, monarchs must obey.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The rest to some faint meaning make pretense, But Shadwell never deviates into sense. Some beams of wit on other souls may fall, Strike through and make a lucid interval; But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray, His rising fogs prevail upon the day.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A man is to be cheated into passion, but to be reasoned into truth.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dim as the borrowed beams of moon and stars To lonely, weary, wandering travellers Is reason to the soul; and as on high Those rolling fires discover but the sky Not light us here, so reason's glimmering ray Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way, But guide us upward to a better day: And as those nightly tapers disappear When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere, So pale grows reason at religion's sight, So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“More Safe, and much more modest 'tis, to say God wou'd not leave Mankind without a way: And that the Scriptures, though not every where Free from Corruption, or intire, or clear, Are uncorrupt, sufficient, clear, intire, In all things which our needfull Faith require. If others in the same Glass better see 'Tis for Themselves they look, but not for me: For my Salvation must its Doom receive Not from what others, but what I believe.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Farewell, too little, and too lately known,”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Be fair, or foul, or rain, or shine, The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine. Not heaven itself upon the past has power; But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I can enjoy her while she's kind; But when she dances in the wind, And shakes the wings and will not stay, I puff the prostitute away: The little or the much she gave is quietly resign'd: Content with poverty, my soul I arm; And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source