John Dryden Quotes

Love is love's reward.

Let grace and goodness be the principal loadstone of thy affections. For love which hath ends, will have an end; whereas that which is founded on true virtue, will always continue.

The sooner you treat your son as a man, the sooner he will be one.

Love works a different way in different minds, the fool it enlightens and the wise it blinds.

Dancing is the poetry of the foot.

He who trusts secrets to a servant makes him his master

Boldness is a mask for fear, however great.

Those who write ill, and they who ne'er durst write, Turn critics out of mere revenge and spite.

I'm a little wounded, but I am not slain; I will lay me down to bleed a while. Then I'll rise and fight again.

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

None but the brave deserve the fair.

When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat; Yet, fooled with hope, men favour the deceit; Trust on, and think tomorrow will repay. Tomorrow's falser than the former day.

Dreams are but interludes, which fancy makes; When monarch reason sleeps, this mimic wakes.

Pains of love be sweeter far than all other pleasures are.

Love is not in our choice but in our fate.

Keen appetite And quick digestion wait on you and yours.

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.

Death in itself is nothing; but we fear to be we know not what, we know not where.

We must beat the iron while it is hot, but we may polish it at leisure.

Words are but pictures of our thoughts.

Jealousy is the jaundice of the soul.

I am as free as nature first made man, Ere the base laws of servitude began, When wild in woods the noble savage ran.

The brave man seeks not popular applause, Nor, overpower'd with arms, deserts his cause; Unsham'd, though foil'd, he does the best he can, Force is of brutes, but honor is of man.

Democracy is essentially anti-authoritarian—that is, it not only demands the right but imposes the responsibility of thinking for ourselves.

None are so busy as the fool and the knave.

Love reckons hours for months, and days for years; and every little absence is an age.

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.

What passions cannot music raise or quell?

A knock-down argument; 'tis but a word and a blow.

Roused by the lash of his own stubborn tail our lion now will foreign foes assail.

To die is landing on some distant shore.

All things are subject to decay and when fate summons, monarchs must obey.

All objects lose by too familiar a view.

Youth should watch joys and shoot them as they fly.

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

Better to hunt in fields, for health unbought, Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught, The wise, for cure, on exercise depend; God never made his work for man to mend.

Ill habits gather unseen degrees, as brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.

When he spoke, what tender words he used! So softly, that like flakes of feathered snow, They melted as they fell.

Damn'd neuters, in their middle way of steering, Are neither fish, nor flesh, nor good red herring.

It is madness to make fortune the mistress of events, because by herself she is nothing and is ruled by prudence.

Forgiveness to the injured does belong; but they ne'er pardon who have done wrong.

Drinking is the soldier's pleasure.

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

When I consider life, it is all a cheat. Yet fooled with hope, people favor this deceit.

The love of liberty with life is given, And life itself the inferior gift of Heaven.

War is the trade of kings.

Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well; the chiefest part of which is to observe those excellencies which delight a reasonable reader.

Tis Fate that flings the dice, And as she flings Of kings makes peasants, And of peasants kings.

And plenty makes us poor.

Tomorrow do thy worst, I have lived today.

Honor is but an empty bubble.

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.

Fortune befriends the bold.