John Dryden Quotes

The end of satire is the amendment of vices by correction; and he who writes honestly is no more an enemy to the offender than the physician to the patient when he prescribes harsh remedies.

Satire is a kind of poetry in which human vices are reprehended.

Whatever is, is in its causes just.

For lawful power is still superior found, When long driven back, at length it stands the ground.

I strongly wish for what I faintly hope; like the daydreams of melancholy men, I think and think in things impossible, yet love to wander in that golden maze.

The perverseness of my fate is such that he's not mine because he's mine too much.

When Misfortune is asleep, let no one wake her.

Ill news is wing'd with fate, and flies apace.

So over violent, or over civil that every man with him was God or Devil.

He is the very Janus of poets; he wears almost everywhere two faces; and you have scarce begun to admire the one, ere you despise the other.

Ev'n wit's a burthen, when it talks too long.

The blushing beauties of a modest maid.

Like pilgrims to th' appointed place we tend; The World's an Inn, and Death the journey's end.

Bets at first were fool-traps, where the wise like spiders lay in ambush for the flies.

Faith is to believe what you do not yet see: the reward for this faith is to see what you believe. Thus all below is strength, and all above is grace.

Seas are the fields of combat for the winds; but when they sweep along some flowery coast, their wings move mildly, and their rage is lost.

He wants worth who dares not praise a foe.

For every inch that is not fool, is rogue.

Happy the man, and happy he alone, he, who can call today his own.

The conscience of a people is their power.

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.

All flowers will droop in the absence of the sun that waked their sweets.

Youth, beauty, graceful action seldom fail: But common interest always will prevail; And pity never ceases to be shown To him who makes the people's wrongs his own.

Time glides with undiscover'd haste; The future but a length behind the past.

Truth is the object of our understanding, as good is of our will; and the understanding can no more be delighted with a lie than the will can choose an apparent evil.

They say everything in the world is good for something.

All empire is no more than power in trust.

Welcome, thou kind deceiver! Thou best of thieves; who, with an easy key, Dost open life, and, unperceived by us, Even steal us from ourselves.

Thus, while the mute creation downward bend Their sight, and to their earthly mother ten, Man looks aloft; and with erected eyes Beholds his own hereditary skies.

Swift was the race, but short the time to run.

Revenge, revenge, Timotheus cries, See the Furies arise!

But when to sin our biased nature leans, The careful Devil is still at hand with means; And providently pimps for ill desires.

Shakespeare was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets;Jonson was theVirgil, the pattern of elaborate writing; I admire him, but I love Shakespeare.

Thus all below is strength, and all above is grace.

Virtue is her own reward.

Fowls, by winter forced, forsake the floods, and wing their hasty flight to happier lands.

For your ignorance is the mother of your devotion to me.

Deathless laurel is the victor's due.

If you have lived, take thankfully the past. Make, as you can, the sweet remembrance last.

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 judgment is a mere lottery.

But how can finite grasp Infinity?

He was exhaled; his great Creator drew His spirit, as the sun the morning dew.

Honor is but an empty bubble.

As one that neither seeks, nor shuns his foe.

Fiction is of the essence of poetry as well as of painting; there is a resemblance in one of human bodies, things, and actions which are not real, and in the other of a true story by fiction.

They live too long who happiness outlive.

Virgil and Horace [were] the severest writers of the severest age.

All authors to their own defects are blind.

The trumpet's loud clangor Excites us to arms.

They first condemn that first advised the ill.