The secret pleasure of a generous act Is the great mind’s great bribe.
JOHN DRYDENThe winds are out of breath.
More John Dryden Quotes
-
-
Riches cannot rescue from the grave, which claims alike the monarch and the slave.
JOHN DRYDEN -
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 -
A narrow mind begets obstinacy; we do not easily believe what we cannot see.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Fame then was cheap, and the first comer sped; And they have kept it since by being dead.
JOHN DRYDEN -
No king nor nation one moment can retard the appointed hour.
JOHN DRYDEN -
An hour will come, with pleasure to relate Your sorrows past, as benefits of Fate.
JOHN DRYDEN -
A farce is that in poetry which grotesque (caricature) is in painting. The persons and actions of a farce are all unnatural, and the manners false, that is, inconsistent with the characters of mankind; and grotesque painting is the just resemblance of this.
JOHN DRYDEN -
They live too long who happiness outlive.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Take not away the life you cannot give: For all things have an equal right to live.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Reason is a crutch for age, but youth is strong enough to walk alone.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Welcome, thou kind deceiver! Thou best of thieves; who, with an easy key, Dost open life, and, unperceived by us, Even steal us from ourselves.
JOHN DRYDEN -
If thou dost still retain the same ill habits, the same follies, too, still thou art bound to vice, and still a slave.
JOHN DRYDEN -
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 DRYDEN -
Pity melts the mind to love.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Of all the tyrannies on human kind the worst is that which persecutes the mind.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Only man clogs his happiness with care, destroying what is with thoughts of what may be.
JOHN DRYDEN -
They think too little who talk too much.
JOHN DRYDEN -
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 -
God never made his work for man to mend.
JOHN DRYDEN -
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 -
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 -
Ill habits gather unseen degrees, as brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.
JOHN DRYDEN -
A man is to be cheated into passion, but to be reasoned into truth.
JOHN DRYDEN -
There is a proud modesty in merit.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Repartee is the soul of conversation.
JOHN DRYDEN -
He who would search for pearls must dive below.
JOHN DRYDEN