What, start at this! when sixty years have spread. Their grey experience o’er thy hoary head? Is this the all observing age could gain? Or hast thou known the world so long in vain?
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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When I consider life, it is all a cheat. Yet fooled with hope, people favor this deceit.
JOHN DRYDEN -
But far more numerous was the herd of such, Who think too little, and who talk too much.
JOHN DRYDEN -
All heiresses are beautiful.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Death ends our woes, and the kind grave shuts up the mournful scene.
JOHN DRYDEN -
The secret pleasure of a generous act Is the great mind’s great bribe.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Satire among the Romans, but not among the Greeks, was a bitter invective poem.
JOHN DRYDEN -
He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets is only victory in him.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Plots, true or false, are necessary things, To raise up commonwealths and ruin kings.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Beware the fury of a patient man.
JOHN DRYDEN -
When we view elevated ideas of Nature, the result of that view is admiration, which is always the cause of pleasure.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Much malice mingled with a little wit Perhaps may censure this mysterious writ.
JOHN DRYDEN -
It is a madness to make fortune the mistress of events, because in herself she is nothing, can rule nothing, but is ruled by prudence.
JOHN DRYDEN -
An hour will come, with pleasure to relate Your sorrows past, as benefits of Fate.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Lucky men are favorites of Heaven.
JOHN DRYDEN -
For truth has such a face and such a mien, as to be loved needs only to be seen.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Every age has a kind of universal genius, which inclines those that live in it to some particular studies.
JOHN DRYDEN -
He who would pry behind the scenes oft sees a counterfeit.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Secret guilt is by silence revealed.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Freedom which in no other land will thrive, Freedom an English subject’s sole prerogative.
JOHN DRYDEN -
The winds are out of breath.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Be slow to resolve, but quick in performance.
JOHN DRYDEN -
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.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Forgiveness to the injured does belong; but they ne’er pardon who have done wrong.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Set all things in their own peculiar place, and know that order is the greatest grace.
JOHN DRYDEN -
An horrible stillness first invades our ear, And in that silence we the tempest fear.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide.
JOHN DRYDEN