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John Dryden (1631 – 1700)


Influential English poet, literary critic, and playwright.
John Dryden
A man is to be cheated into passion,but reasoned into truth.
Dryden quotes
As sure as a gun.
Dryden
Thus having said, she turn'd, and made appear
Her neck refulgent, and dishevell'd hair,
Which, flowing from her shoulders, reached the ground,
And widely spread ambrosial scents around.
In length of train descends her sweeping gown;
And, by her graceful walk, the Queen of Love is known.




Dryden John quotes
Whatever is, is in its causes just.
Dryden John
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 quotes
Of ancient race by birth, but nobler yet
In his own worth.
John Dryden
Pains of love be sweeter far
Than all other pleasures are.
Dryden John quotes
Railing and praising were his usual themes;
And both, to show his judgment, in extremes;
So over violent, or over civil,
That every man with him was God or devil.
Dryden
Sooth'd with the sound, the king grew vain;
Fought all his battles o'er again;
And thrice he routed all his foes, and thrice he slew the slain.
Dryden John
'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
To begin then with Shakespeare; he was the man who of all Modern, and perhaps Ancient Poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the Images of Nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily: when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learn'd; he needed not the spectacles of Books to read Nature; he look'd inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is every where alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of Mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his Comick wit degenerating into clenches; his serious swelling into Bombast. But he is alwayes great, when some great occasion is presented to him: no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of the Poets,




John Dryden quotes
There is a pleasure sure
In being mad which none but madmen know.
John Dryden
Look round the habitable world: how few
Know their own good, or knowing it, pursue.
Dryden quotes
Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child.
Dryden John
Never was patriot yet, but was a fool.
Dryden John quotes
When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat;
Yet, fooled with hope, men favor the deceit;
Trust on, and think tomorrow will repay.
Tomorrow's falser than the former day.
None would live past years again,
Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain;
And from the dregs of life think to receive
What the first sprightly running could not give.
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 quotes
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
Mankind is ever the same, and nothing lost out of nature, though everything is altered.
Dryden John
All empire is no more than power in trust.


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