There’s a proud modesty in merit; averse from asking, and resolved to pay ten times the gifts it asks.
JOHN DRYDENHe invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets is only victory in him.
More John Dryden Quotes
-
-
He is a perpetual fountain of good sense.
JOHN DRYDEN -
The glorious lamp of heaven, the radiant sun, Is Nature’s eye.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Courage from hearts and not from numbers grows.
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 -
By education most have been misled.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Some 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.
JOHN DRYDEN -
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 -
Sure there’s contagion in the tears of friends.
JOHN DRYDEN -
He trudged along unknowing what he sought, And whistled as he went, for want of thought.
JOHN DRYDEN -
More liberty begets desire of more; The hunger still increases with the store.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Desire of greatness is a godlike sin.
JOHN DRYDEN -
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 -
Plots, true or false, are necessary things, To raise up commonwealths and ruin kings.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Honor is but an empty bubble.
JOHN DRYDEN -
He who would pry behind the scenes oft sees a counterfeit.
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 -
We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Beware of the fury of the patient man.
JOHN DRYDEN -
So the false spider, when her nets are spread, deep ambushed in her silent den does lie.
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 -
Nor is the people’s judgment always true: the most may err as grossly as the few.
JOHN DRYDEN -
For what can power give more than food and drink, To live at ease, and not be bound to think?
JOHN DRYDEN -
Reason to rule, mercy to forgive: The first is law, the last prerogative. Life is an adventure in forgiveness.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Mighty things from small beginnings grow.
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 -
Bold knaves thrive without one grain of sense, But good men starve for want of impudence.
JOHN DRYDEN