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Our vows are heard betimes! and Heaven takes care To grant, before we can conclude the prayer: Preventing angels met it half the way, And sent us back to praise, who came to pray.

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

Divine Faculty Force God Kind Man Philosophy
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

Choice Delight Evil Lying Object Truth Understand
Reason is a crutch for age, but youth is strong enough to walk alone.
JOHN DRYDEN

Age Alone Enough Reason Strong Walk Youth
For your ignorance is the mother of your devotion to me.
JOHN DRYDEN

Devotion Ignorance Mom Myself Yourself
And write whatever Time shall bring to pass With pens of adamant on plates of brass.
JOHN DRYDEN

Plate Time Writing
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

Creation Earth Eyes Man Mom Sky Soft
Youth should watch joys and shoot them as they fly.
JOHN DRYDEN

Fly Joy Youth
What precious drops are those, Which silently each other’s track pursue, Bright as young diamonds in their faint dew?
JOHN DRYDEN

Dew Precious Pursue Track Young
They first condemn that first advised the ill.
JOHN DRYDEN

Advise Sick
Our souls sit close and silently within, And their own web from their own entrails spin; And when eyes meet far off, our sense is such, That, spider-like, we feel the tenderest touch.
JOHN DRYDEN

Eyes Feeling Ourselves Soul Tender Togetherness Touch
Sure there is none but fears a future state; And when the most obdurate swear they do not, Their trembling hearts belie their boasting tongues.
JOHN DRYDEN

Future Heart State Tongue Tremble
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.
JOHN DRYDEN

Life Man Origin Virtue Word
Take not away the life you cannot give: For all things have an equal right to live.
JOHN DRYDEN

Equality Life Live Right
Freedom which in no other land will thrive, Freedom an English subject’s sole prerogative.
JOHN DRYDEN

Freedom Subject Thrive
Fattened in vice, so callous and so gross, he sins and sees not, senseless of his loss.
JOHN DRYDEN

Himself Loss See Vice
A man is to be cheated into passion, but to be reasoned into truth.
JOHN DRYDEN

Cheating Man Passion Reason Truth

Our vows are heard betimes! and Heaven takes care To grant, before we can conclude the prayer: Preventing angels met it half the way, And sent us back to praise, who came to pray.

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Our vows are heard betimes! and Heaven takes care To grant, before we can conclude the prayer: Preventing angels met it half the way, And sent us back to praise, who came to pray.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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