Dryden Quotes

Joy rul'd the day, and Love the night. ~ John Dryden

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. ~ John Dryden

And nobler is a limited command, Given by the love of all your native land, Than a successive title, long and dark, Drawn from the mouldy rolls of Noah's Ark. ~ John Dryden

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

stoodAloof from streets, encompass'd with a wood.Dryden.2. Applied to persons, it often insinuates caution and circumspection. Turn on the bloody hounds with heads of steel,And make the cowards stand aloof at bay.Shak.Henry VI. Going northwards, aloof, as long as they had any doubt of being pursued, at last when they were out of reach, they turned and crossed the ocean to Spain.Bacon. The king would not, by any means, enter the city, until he had aloof seen the cross set up upon the greater tower of Granada, whereby it became Christian ground.Bacon'sHen. VII. Two pots stood by a river, one of brass, the other of clay. The water carried them away; the earthen vessel kept aloof from t'other.L'Estrange'sFables. The strong may fight aloof; Ancaeus try'dHis force too ~ Samuel Johnson

The fortitude of a Christian consists in patience, not in enterprises which the poets call heroic, and which are commonly the effects of interest, pride and worldly honor. ~ John Dryden

Fortune's unjust; she ruins oft the brave, and him who should be victor, makes the slave. ~ John Dryden

Then we upon our globe's last verge shall go,
And view the ocean leaning on the sky:
From thence our rolling Neighbours we shall know,
And on the Lunar world securely pry. ~ John Dryden

It is sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is God's plenty. ~ John Dryden

Fool, not to know that love endures no tie,
And Jove but laughs at lovers' perjury. ~ John Dryden

I saw myself the lambent easy light Gild the brown horror, and dispel the night. ~ John Dryden

Thus like a Captive in an Isle confin'd,
Man walks at large, a Pris'ner of the Mind ~ John Dryden

Who climbs the grammar-tree, distinctly knows Where noun, and verb, and participle grows. ~ John Dryden

Fame then was cheap, and the first comer sped; And they have kept it since by being dead. ~ 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

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

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. ~ John Dryden

Secret guilt by silence is betrayed. ~ John Dryden

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

The province of the soul is large enough to fill up every cranny of your time, and leave you much to answer for if one wretch be damned by your neglect. ~ John Dryden

Seek not to know what must not be reveal, for joy only flows where fate is most concealed. A busy person would find their sorrows much more; if future fortunes were known before! ~ John Dryden

Riches cannot rescue from the grave, which claims alike the monarch and the slave. ~ John Dryden

What passions cannot music raise or quell? ~ John Dryden

Beware of the fury of the patient man. ~ John Dryden

The elephant is never won by anger; nor must that man who would reclaim a lion take him by the teeth. ~ John Dryden

I was constantly being around artists and Bohemian types. ~ Spencer Dryden

Virtue without success is a fair picture shown by an ill light; but lucky men are favorites of heaven; all own the chief, when fortune owns the cause. ~ John Dryden

You see through love, and that deludes your sight, As what is straight seems crooked through the water. ~ John Dryden

What passion cannot music raise and quell! ~ John Dryden

For secrets are edged tools, And must be kept from children and from fools. ~ John Dryden

A goalies job is to stop pucks, ... Well yeah, thats part of it, but you know what else is? ... Youre trying to deliver a message to your team that things are OK back here. This end of the ice is pretty well cared for. You take it now and go. Go! Feel the freedom in order to feel that dynamic, creative, offensive player and go out and score ... That was my job. And it was to try to deliver a feeling. ~ Ken Dryden

That, if the Gentiles, (whom no Law inspir'd,)
By Nature did what was by Law requir'd;
They, who the written Rule and never known,
Were to themselves both Rule and Law alone:
To Natures plain Indictment they shall plead;
And, by their Conscience, be condemn'd or freed. ~ John Dryden

Pride - Lord of human kind ~ John Dryden

My right eye itches, some good luck is near. ~ John Dryden

Shame on the body for breaking down while the spirit perseveres. ~ John Dryden

My heart's so full of joy, That I shall do some wild extravagance Of love in public; and the foolish world, Which knows not tenderness, will think me mad. ~ John Dryden

It was May of my senior year at Leighton Gage and on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons we sat in an air-conditioned hourglass and savored our own total incomprehension as an assistant professor charted the poems of Dryden, Lovelace, Fanshawe and Suckling. They were all so incomparably dead, the Penguin poets, and we loved them because their lines meant less to us than the dark side of the moon. ~ Don DeLillo

The winds that never moderation knew,
Afraid to blow too much, too faintly blew;
Or out of breath with joy, could not enlarge
Their straighten'd lungs or conscious of their charge. ~ John Dryden

Successful crimes alone are justified. ~ John Dryden

And plenty makes us poor. ~ John Dryden

Home is the sacred refuge of our life. ~ John Dryden

Maria Edgeworth grumbled against vandals who ruined immortal works by quoting the life out of them. "How far our literature may in future suffer from these blighting swarms, will best be conceived by a glance at what they have already withered and blasted of the favourite productions of our most popular poets." Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden, scissored, patched, and frayed. ~ Willis Regier

I trade both with the living and the dead, for the enrichment of our native language. ~ John Dryden

Fools are more hard to conquer than persuade. ~ John Dryden

Trust on and think To-morrow will repay; To-morrow's falser than the former day; Lies worse; and while it says, we shall be blest With some new Joys, cuts off what we possest. ~ John Dryden

The fool of nature stood with stupid eyes And gaping mouth, that testified surprise. ~ John Dryden

Prodigious actions may as well be done, by weaver's issue, as the prince's son. ~ John Dryden

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

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

Not sharp revenge, nor hell itself can find, A fiercer torment than a guilty mind, Which day and night doth dreadfully accuse, Condemns the wretch, and still the charge renews. ~ John Dryden

Self-defence is Nature's eldest law. ~ John Dryden

I am resolved to grow fat and look young till forty, and then slip out of the world with the first wrinkle and the reputation of five-and-twenty. ~ John Dryden

And that the Scriptures, though not everywhere Free from corruption, or entire, or clear, Are uncorrupt, sufficient, clear, entire In all things which our needful faith require. ~ John Dryden

But 'tis the talent of our English nation, Still to be plotting some new reformation. ~ John Dryden

Not judging truth to be in nature better than falsehood, but setting a value upon both according to interest. ~ John Dryden

words are but pictures of our thoughts ~ John Dryden

Content with poverty, my soul I arm; And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm. ~ John Dryden

The scum that rises upmost, when the nation boils. ~ John Dryden

I feel my sinews slackened with the fright, and a cold sweat trills down all over my limbs, as if I were dissolving into water. ~ John Dryden

... So when the last and dreadful hour
This crumbling pageant shall devour,
The trumpet shall be heard on high,
The dead shall live, the living die,
And Music shall untune the sky ~ John Dryden

Satire among the Romans, but not among the Greeks, was a bitter invective poem. ~ John Dryden

She, though in full-blown flower of glorious beauty, Grows cold even in the summer of her age. ~ John Dryden

The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves. ~ John Dryden

As one that neither seeks, nor shuns his foe. ~ John Dryden

Old as I am, for ladies' love unfit, The power of beauty I remember yet. ~ John Dryden

He called it taking, but I felt as though he were giving me these things, these actions, like pieces of himself. Challenging me to receive these odd gifts, because they were all he had to give. His attention, his regard. His respect, which was the strangest thing of all, because I had expected to feel degraded at some point in all this and instead I felt valued beyond measure. Cherished. Strong. ~ Delphine Dryden

Not to ask is not be denied. ~ John Dryden

To so perverse a sex all grace is vain. ~ John Dryden

But how can finite grasp Infinity? ~ John Dryden

Who thinks all Science, as all Virtue, vain; Who counts Geometry and numbers Toys ... ~ 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

For all have not the gift of martyrdom. ~ John Dryden

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

People learn to be hostile,disparaging and manipulative because it works for them.these people expect you to react in certain ways to their style,because in that way they win.if you allow yourself to be sucked into their expectations,you have not only let them get away but you are bound to feel frustrated,helpless and eventuall your bad side of nature will reached its climax. ~ Windy Dryden

When beauty fires the blood, how love exalts the mind! ~ John Dryden

Of all the tyrannies on human kind the worst is that which persecutes the mind. ~ John Dryden

And, dying, bless the hand that gave the blow. ~ John Dryden

The glorious Dryden, refiner and purifier of English verse, did less for rhyme than he did for metre. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

He wants worth who dares not praise a foe. ~ John Dryden

If passion rules, how weak does reason prove! ~ John Dryden

Our souls sit close and silently within, And their own web from their own entrails spin; And when eyes meet far off, our sense is such, That, spider-like, we feel the tenderest touch. ~ John Dryden

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

Only man clogs his happiness with care, destroying what is with thoughts of what may be. ~ John Dryden

Honor is but an empty bubble. ~ John Dryden

I know that some knowledgeable people fear that although we might be willing to spend a couple of billion dollars in 1958, because we still remember the humiliation of Sputnik last October, next year we will be so preoccupied by color television, or new-style cars, or the beginning of another national election, that we will be unwilling to pay another year's installment on our space conquest bill. For that to happen well, I'd just as soon we didn't start. ~ Hugh Latimer Dryden

Fool that I was, upon my eagle's wings I bore this wren, till I was tired with soaring, and now he mounts above me. ~ John Dryden

Deathless laurel is the victor's due. ~ John Dryden

Two arguing geeks were stoppable. Three arguing geeks created an infinite argument vortex of doom that sucked time down like a black hole. ~ Delphine Dryden

The people have a right supreme
To make their kings, for Kings are made for them.
All Empire is no more than Pow'r in Trust,
Which when resum'd, can be no longer just.
Successionm for the general good design'd,
In its own wrong a Nation cannot bind. ~ John Dryden

so meer Poets and meer Musicians, are as sottish as meer Drunkards are, who live in a continuall mist without seeing, or judgeing any thing clearly.
A man should be learn'd in severall Sciences, and should have a rea∣sonable Philosophicall, and ni some measure a Mathematicall head; to be a compleat and excellent Poet ~ John Dryden

Long pains, with use of bearing, are half eased. ~ John Dryden

Lucky men are favorites of Heaven. ~ John Dryden

Zeal, the blind conductor of the will. ~ John Dryden

For truth has such a face and such a mien, as to be loved needs only to be seen. ~ John Dryden

Here lies my wife: here let her lie! Now she's at rest, and so am I. ~ 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

The secret pleasure of a generous act Is the great mind's great bribe. ~ John Dryden

And love's the noblest frailty of the mind. ~ John Dryden

The model for an NHL without fighting is right there in front of us. The [playoffs are] the time of year that fans love best; when the best hockey is played ... [The] enforcers don't play. Even mini-enforcers ... remain on the bench. Teams and coaches can't afford anything stupid and unpredictable ... With no one to fight back for them, players go harder into the corners, more determinedly to the front of the net. If they want to fire up the crowd and their teammates, they have to do it themselves. And in the playoffs, they do. ~ Ken Dryden

A thing well said will be wit in all languages. ~ John Dryden