John Dryden Quotes
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With how much ease believe we what we wish!
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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.
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Look around the inhabited world; how few know their own good, or knowing it, pursue.
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Go miser go, for money sell your soul. Trade wares for wares and trudge from pole to pole, So others may say when you are dead and gone. See what a vast estate he left his son.
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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.
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Can heav'nly minds such high resentment show,Or exercise their spite in human woe?
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With ravished earsThe monarch hears;Assumes the god,Affects the nod,And seems to shake the spheres.
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And that one hunting, which the Devil design'dFor one fair female, lost him half the kind.
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And torture one poor word ten thousand ways.
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All delays are dangerous in war.
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When I consider life, it is all a cheat. Yet fooled with hope, people favor this deceit.
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By viewing Nature, Nature's handmaid Art,Makes mighty things from small beginnings grow.
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Forgiveness to the injured does belong; but they ne'er pardon who have done wrong.
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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.
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Plots, true or false, are necessary things,To raise up commonwealths and ruin kings.
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Whate’er he did was done with so much ease,In him alone 't was natural to please.
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Whistling to keep myself from being afraid.
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Thespis, the first professor of our art,At country wakes sung ballads from a cart.
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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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Either be wholly slaves or wholly free.
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The sword within the scabbard keep,And let mankind agree.
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He trudged along unknowing what he sought,And whistled as he went, for want of thought.
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Our vows are heard betimes! and Heaven takes careTo grant, before we can conclude the prayer:Preventing angels met it half the way,And sent us back to praise, who came to pray.
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Second thoughts, they say, are best.