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There’s a proud modesty in merit; averse from asking, and resolved to pay ten times the gifts it asks.

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

Estate Himself Misery Money Sell Soul
Truth is the object of our understanding, as good is of our will; and the understanding can no more be delighted with a lie than the will can choose an apparent evil.
JOHN DRYDEN

Choice Delight Evil Lying Object Truth Understand
All objects lose by too familiar a view.
JOHN DRYDEN

Familiar Lose Object View
I am resolved to grow fat and look young till forty, and then slip out of the world with the first wrinkle and the reputation of five-and-twenty.
JOHN DRYDEN

Growth Myself Reputation Young
Thus, while the mute creation downward bend Their sight, and to their earthly mother ten, Man looks aloft; and with erected eyes Beholds his own hereditary skies.
JOHN DRYDEN

Creation Earth Eyes Man Mom Sky Soft
Bold knaves thrive without one grain of sense, But good men starve for want of impudence.
JOHN DRYDEN

Bold Goodness Starve
For secrets are edged tools, And must be kept from children and from fools.
JOHN DRYDEN

Children Edge Fools Secret Tools
If you have lived, take thankfully the past. Make, as you can, the sweet remembrance last.
JOHN DRYDEN

Live Past Remember Thankful
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.
JOHN DRYDEN

Better Health Himself Man Work
Let grace and goodness be the principal loadstone of thy affections.
JOHN DRYDEN

Affection Goodness Grace Principal
Affability, mildness, tenderness, and a word which I would fain bring back to its original signification of virtue,–I mean good-nature,–are of daily use; they are the bread of mankind and staff of life.
JOHN DRYDEN

Life Man Origin Virtue Word
For all the happiness mankind can gain Is not in pleasure, but in rest from pain.
JOHN DRYDEN

Happiness Kind Man Sadness
Nothing to build, and all things to destroy.
JOHN DRYDEN

Build Destroy
To die for faction is a common evil, But to be hanged for nonsense is the devil.
JOHN DRYDEN

Common Death Devil Evil
The winds are out of breath.
JOHN DRYDEN

Breathe Wind
Three poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpass’d; The next, in majesty; in both the last. The force of Nature could no further go; To make a third, she join’d the former two.
JOHN DRYDEN

Age Distant Force Herself Nature Poet

There’s a proud modesty in merit; averse from asking, and resolved to pay ten times the gifts it asks.

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There’s a proud modesty in merit; averse from asking, and resolved to pay ten times the gifts it asks.

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