Men’s virtues I have commended as freely as I have taxed their crimes.
JOHN DRYDENSome of our philosophizing divines have too much exalted the faculties of our souls, when they have maintained that by their force mankind has been able to find out God.
More John Dryden Quotes
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Reason to rule, mercy to forgive: The first is law, the last prerogative. Life is an adventure in forgiveness.
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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.
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None are so busy as the fool and the knave.
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For secrets are edged tools, And must be kept from children and from fools.
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They first condemn that first advised the ill.
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Dancing is the poetry of the foot.
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Sure there’s contagion in the tears of friends.
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Confidence is the feeling we have before knowing all the facts.
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Sweet is pleasure after pain.
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Imagining is in itself the very height and life of poetry, which, by a kind of enthusiasm or extraordinary emotion of the soul, makes it seem to us that we behold those things which the poet paints.
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War is the trade of kings.
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Politicians neither love nor hate.
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Reason is a crutch for age, but youth is strong enough to walk alone.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Hushed as midnight silence.
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Much malice mingled with a little wit Perhaps may censure this mysterious writ.
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The sooner you treat your son as a man, the sooner he will be one.
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Shakespeare was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets;Jonson was theVirgil, the pattern of elaborate writing; I admire him, but I love Shakespeare.
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Swift was the race, but short the time to run.
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For your ignorance is the mother of your devotion to me.
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Riches cannot rescue from the grave, which claims alike the monarch and the slave.
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All things are subject to decay and when fate summons, monarchs must obey.
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But when to sin our biased nature leans, The careful Devil is still at hand with means; And providently pimps for ill desires.
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Tis a good thing to laugh at any rate; and if a straw can tickle a man, it is an instrument of happiness.
JOHN DRYDEN