Be slow to resolve, but quick in performance.
JOHN DRYDENNot 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.
More John Dryden Quotes
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The love of liberty with life is given, And life itself the inferior gift of Heaven.
JOHN DRYDEN -
A happy genius is the gift of nature.
JOHN DRYDEN -
He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets is only victory in him.
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 -
And write whatever Time shall bring to pass With pens of adamant on plates of brass.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Those who write ill, and they who ne’er durst write, Turn critics out of mere revenge and spite.
JOHN DRYDEN -
There is a pleasure in being mad, which none but madmen know.
JOHN DRYDEN -
While I am compassed round With mirth, my soul lies hid in shades of grief, Whence, like the bird of night, with half-shut eyes, She peeps, and sickens at the sight of day.
JOHN DRYDEN -
A farce is that in poetry which grotesque (caricature) is in painting. The persons and actions of a farce are all unnatural, and the manners false, that is, inconsistent with the characters of mankind; and grotesque painting is the just resemblance of this.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Three poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpass’d; The next, in majesty; in both the last. The force of Nature could no further go; To make a third, she join’d the former two.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Pains of love be sweeter far than all other pleasures are.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Death in itself is nothing; but we fear to be we know not what, we know not where.
JOHN DRYDEN -
I saw myself the lambent easy light Gild the brown horror, and dispel the night.
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 -
Love reckons hours for months, and days for years; and every little absence is an age.
JOHN DRYDEN -
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 -
By education most have been misled; So they believe, because they were bred. The priest continues where the nurse began, And thus the child imposes on the man.
JOHN DRYDEN -
All delays are dangerous in war.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Sure there’s contagion in the tears of friends.
JOHN DRYDEN -
God never made his work for man to mend.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Anger will never disappear so long as thoughts of resentment are cherished in the mind. Anger will disappear just as soon as thoughts of resentment are forgotten.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Silence in times of suffering is the best.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Ill habits gather unseen degrees, as brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Politicians neither love nor hate.
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 -
And love’s the noblest frailty of the mind.
JOHN DRYDEN