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.
JOHN DRYDEN, Essay of Dramatick Poesie
God never made his work for man to mend.
JOHN DRYDEN, Epistle to John Driden of Chesterton, 1700
- For truth has such a face and such a mien
- As to be loved needs only to be seen.
JOHN DRYDEN, The Hind and the Panther
- 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, Imitation of Horace
- As long as words a different sense will bear,
- And each may be his own interpreter,
- Our airy faith will no foundation find;
- The word's a weathercock for every wind.
JOHN DRYDEN, The Hind and the Panther
Better shun the bait, than struggle in the snare.
JOHN DRYDEN, To My Honoured Kinsman, John Driden
- What flocks of critics hover here to-day,
- As vultures wait on armies for their prey,
- All gaping for the carcass of a play!
- With croaking notes they bode some dire event,
- And follow dying poets by the scent.
JOHN DRYDEN, prologue, All for Love
- Let Fortune empty her whole quiver on me,
- I have a soul that, like an ample shield,
- Can take in all, and verge enough for more....
- Fate was not mine, nor am I Fate's....
- Souls know no conquerors.
JOHN DRYDEN, Don Sebastian
- Nor is the people's judgment always true:
- The most may err as grossly as the few.
JOHN DRYDEN, Absalom and Achitophel
- I am as free as Nature first made man,
- Ere the base laws of servitude began,
- When wild in woods the noble savage ran.
JOHN DRYDEN, The Conquest of Granada
A man is to be cheated into passion, but to be reasoned into truth.
JOHN DRYDEN, Religio Laici
- O gracious God! how far have we
- Profaned thy heavenly gift of poesy!
JOHN DRYDEN, To the Pious Memory of Mrs. Anne Killegrew
- Pains of love be sweeter far
- Than all other pleasures are.
JOHN DRYDEN Tyrannic Love
Too black for heav'n, and yet too white for hell.
JOHN DRYDEN, The Hind and the Panther
- Rhyme is the rock on which thou art to wreck,
- 'Tis fatal to thy fame and to thy neck.
JOHN DRYDEN, Abaslom and Achitophel
- An horrid stillness first invades the ear,
- And in that silence we the tempest fear.
JOHN DRYDEN, Astraea Redux
JOHN DRYDEN, Palamon and Arcite
A satirical poet is the check of the laymen on bad priests.
JOHN DRYDEN, Fables, Ancient and Modern
- Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;
- He who would search for pearls, must dive below.
JOHN DRYDEN, prologue, All for Love
And torture one poor word ten thousand ways.
JOHN DRYDEN, Britannia Rediviva
- Not heaven itself upon the past has power;
- But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.
JOHN DRYDEN, Imitation of Horace
- Old as I am, for ladies' love unfit,
- The power of beauty I remember yet.
JOHN DRYDEN, Cymon and Iphigenia
- A double noose thou on thy neck dost pull
- For writing treason and for writing dull.
JOHN DRYDEN, Abaslom and Achitophel
Love is a passion which kindles honor into noble acts.
JOHN DRYDEN, The Rival Ladies
Better one suffer, than a nation grieve.
JOHN DRYDEN, Absalom and Achitophel
- For present joys are more to flesh and blood
- Than a dull prospect of a distant good.
JOHN DRYDEN, The Hind and the Panther
- While I am compassed round
- With mirth, my soul lies hid in shades of grief,
- Whence, like the bird of night, with half-shut eyes,
- She peeps, and sickens at the sight of day.
JOHN DRYDEN, The Rival Ladies
- Fame then was cheap, and the first comer sped;
- And they have kept it since by being dead.
JOHN DRYDEN, The Conquest of Granada
Every language is so full of its own proprieties that what is beautiful in one is often barbarous, nay, sometimes nonsense, in another.
JOHN DRYDEN, Works of John Dryden (1803)
- Love and Time with reverence use,
- Treat them like a parting friend:
- Nor the golden gifts refuse
- Which in youth sincere they send:
- For each year their price is more,
- And they less simple than before.
JOHN DRYDEN Tyrannic Love
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