Since a true knowledge of nature gives us pleasure, a lively imitation of it, either in poetry or painting, must produce a much greater; for both these arts are not only true imitations of nature, but of the best nature.
JOHN DRYDENFiction is of the essence of poetry as well as of painting; there is a resemblance in one of human bodies, things, and actions which are not real, and in the other of a true story by fiction.
More John Dryden Quotes
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Ill habits gather unseen degrees, as brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.
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 -
Secret guilt is by silence revealed.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Present joys are more to flesh and blood Than a dull prospect of a distant good.
JOHN DRYDEN -
There’s a proud modesty in merit; averse from asking, and resolved to pay ten times the gifts it asks.
JOHN DRYDEN -
By education most have been misled.
JOHN DRYDEN -
We can never be grieved for their miseries who are thoroughly wicked, and have thereby justly called their calamities on themselves.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Treason is greatest where trust is greatest.
JOHN DRYDEN -
For what can power give more than food and drink, To live at ease, and not be bound to think?
JOHN DRYDEN -
If you have lived, take thankfully the past. Make, as you can, the sweet remembrance last.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Only man clogs his happiness with care, destroying what is with thoughts of what may be.
JOHN DRYDEN -
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.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Politicians neither love nor hate.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Old age creeps on us where we think it night.
JOHN DRYDEN -
For Art may err, but Nature cannot miss.
JOHN DRYDEN