Repentance is but want of power to sin.
JOHN DRYDENYouth should watch joys and shoot them as they fly.
More John Dryden Quotes
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The winds are out of breath.
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Fool that I was, upon my eagle’s wings I bore this wren, till I was tired with soaring, and now he mounts above me.
JOHN DRYDEN -
We must beat the iron while it is hot, but we may polish it at leisure.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Time and death shall depart and say in flying Love has found out a way to live, by dying.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Since every man who lives is born to die, And none can boast sincere felicity, With equal mind, what happens, let us bear, Nor joy nor grieve too much for things beyond our care. Like pilgrims to the’ appointed place we tend; The world’s an inn, and death the journey’s end.
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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.
JOHN DRYDEN -
When I consider life, it is all a cheat. Yet fooled with hope, people favor this deceit.
JOHN DRYDEN -
None but the brave deserve the fair.
JOHN DRYDEN -
A good conscience is a port which is landlocked on every side, where no winds can possibly invade. There a man may not only see his own image, but that of his Maker, clearly reflected from the undisturbed waters.
JOHN DRYDEN -
They say everything in the world is good for something.
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For your ignorance is the mother of your devotion to me.
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Every age has a kind of universal genius, which inclines those that live in it to some particular studies.
JOHN DRYDEN -
If the faults of men in orders are only to be judged among themselves, they are all in some sort parties; for, since they say the honour of their order is concerned in every member of it, how can we be sure that they will be impartial judges?
JOHN DRYDEN -
Never was patriot yet, but was a fool.
JOHN DRYDEN -
If thou dost still retain the same ill habits, the same follies, too, still thou art bound to vice, and still a slave.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Few know the use of life before ’tis past.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Love works a different way in different minds, the fool it enlightens and the wise it blinds.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Be fair, or foul, or rain, or shine, The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine. Not heaven itself upon the past has power; But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.
JOHN DRYDEN -
God never made his work for man to mend.
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Nor is the people’s judgment always true: the most may err as grossly as the few.
JOHN DRYDEN -
And write whatever Time shall bring to pass With pens of adamant on plates of brass.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Virtue in distress, and vice in triumph make atheists of mankind.
JOHN DRYDEN -
We can never be grieved for their miseries who are thoroughly wicked, and have thereby justly called their calamities on themselves.
JOHN DRYDEN -
There’s a proud modesty in merit; averse from asking, and resolved to pay ten times the gifts it asks.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Keen appetite And quick digestion wait on you and yours.
JOHN DRYDEN -
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.
JOHN DRYDEN