John Dryden Quotes
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Men met each other with erected look,The steps were higher that they took;Friends to congratulate their friends made haste,And long inveterate foes saluted as they passed.
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Behold him setting in his western skies,The shadows lengthening as the vapours rise.
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But love's a malady without a cure.
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Reason is a crutch for age, but youth is strong enough to walk alone.
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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.
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Your ignorance is the mother of your devotion to me.
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O gracious God! how far have weProfaned thy heavenly gift of poesy!
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Leave writing plays, and choose for thy commandSome peaceful province in acrostic land.There thou mayst wings display and altars raise,And torture one poor word ten thousand ways.
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Than a successive title long and dark,Drawn from the mouldy rolls of Noah's ark.
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The gates of hell are open night and day;Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:But to return, and view the cheerful skies,In this the task and mighty labor lies.
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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!
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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.
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His courage foes, his friends his truth proclaim.
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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.
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Thus in a pageant-show a plot is made;And peace itself is war in masquerade.
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She hugged the offender, and forgave the offense:Sex to the last.
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And plenty makes us poor.
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Whistling to keep myself from being afraid.
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Pains of love be sweeter far than all other pleasures are.
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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.
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Three poets, in three distant ages born,Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.The first in loftiness of thought surpassed;The next, in majesty; in both the last.The force of Nature could no further go.To make a third, she joined the former two.
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So, when the last and dreadful HourThis crumbling Pageant shall devour,The trumpet shall be heard on high,The dead shall live, the living die,And musick shall untune the Sky.
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But far more numerous was the herd of such, Who think too little, and who talk too much.
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Fool, not to know that love endures no tie,And Jove but laughs at lovers' perjury.