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Not sharp revenge, nor hell itself can find, A fiercer torment than a guilty mind, Which day and night doth dreadfully accuse, Condemns the wretch, and still the charge renews.

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
For they can conquer who believe they can.
JOHN DRYDEN

Believe Conquer
He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets is only victory in him.
JOHN DRYDEN

Author Himself Poet Theft Victory
Content with poverty, my soul I arm; And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm.
JOHN DRYDEN

Myself Poverty Soul Virtue Warm
Old age creeps on us where we think it night.
JOHN DRYDEN

Age Night Old Ourselves
Sculptors are obliged to follow the manners of the painters, and to make many ample folds, which are unsufferable hardness, and more like a rock than a natural garment.
JOHN DRYDEN

Follow Natural Obligation Paint Rock Sculptor
Thus all below is strength, and all above is grace.
JOHN DRYDEN

Grace Strength
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

Hope Life Live Pleasure Run Thinking
Many things impossible to thought have been by need to full perfection brought.
JOHN DRYDEN

Brought Impossible Need Perfection
Presence of mind and courage in distress, Are more than arrives to procure success?
JOHN DRYDEN

Courage Mindset Presence Success
But far more numerous was the herd of such, Who think too little, and who talk too much.
JOHN DRYDEN

Numerous Talk Thinking
Much malice mingled with a little wit Perhaps may censure this mysterious writ.
JOHN DRYDEN

Infidelity Mysterious Thinking
For truth has such a face and such a mien, as to be loved needs only to be seen.
JOHN DRYDEN

Face Need See Truth
Present joys are more to flesh and blood Than a dull prospect of a distant good.
JOHN DRYDEN

Distance Flesh Goodness Present
Time glides with undiscover’d haste; The future but a length behind the past.
JOHN DRYDEN

Discover Future Glide Haste Length Past
But Shakespeare’s magic could not copied be; Within that circle none durst walk but he.
JOHN DRYDEN

Himself Magic Walk
Satire is a kind of poetry in which human vices are reprehended.
JOHN DRYDEN

Human Kind Poetry Satire Vice
Every language is so full of its own proprieties that what is beautiful in one is often barbarous, nay, sometimes nonsense, in another.
JOHN DRYDEN

Beautiful Language Oneself
None are so busy as the fool and the knave.
JOHN DRYDEN

Busy Fools
Boldness is a mask for fear, however great.
JOHN DRYDEN

Bold Fear Greatness Mask
Fiction 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.
JOHN DRYDEN

Action Essence Fiction Human Poetry Story
Luxurious kings are to their people lost, They live like drones, upon the public cost.
JOHN DRYDEN

Live Lost Luxury People Public
Pride – Lord of human kind.
JOHN DRYDEN

Human Kind Pride
They, who would combat general authority with particular opinion, must first establish themselves a reputation of understanding better than other men.
JOHN DRYDEN

Authority Better General Man Opinion Understand
For those whom God to ruin has design’d, He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind.
JOHN DRYDEN

Design God Mindset Ruin
Virtue in distress, and vice in triumph make atheists of mankind.
JOHN DRYDEN

Kind Man Vice Virtue
Love reckons hours for months, and days for years; and every little absence is an age.
JOHN DRYDEN

Absence Age Love Time

Not sharp revenge, nor hell itself can find, A fiercer torment than a guilty mind, Which day and night doth dreadfully accuse, Condemns the wretch, and still the charge renews.

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Not sharp revenge, nor hell itself can find, A fiercer torment than a guilty mind, Which day and night doth dreadfully accuse, Condemns the wretch, and still the charge renews.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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