Truth is the foundation of all knowledge and the cement of all societies.
JOHN DRYDENSince 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.
More John Dryden Quotes
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Blown roses hold their sweetness to the last.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Trust on and think To-morrow will repay; To-morrow’s falser than the former day; Lies worse; and while it says, we shall be blest With some new Joys, cuts off what we possest.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Honor is but an empty bubble.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Reason to rule, mercy to forgive: The first is law, the last prerogative. Life is an adventure in forgiveness.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Sure there’s contagion in the tears of friends.
JOHN DRYDEN -
For all the happiness mankind can gain Is not in pleasure, but in rest from pain.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Mighty things from small beginnings grow.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Death ends our woes, and the kind grave shuts up the mournful scene.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Order is the greatest grace.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Deathless laurel is the victor’s due.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Old as I am, for ladies’ love unfit, The power of beauty I remember yet.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Dancing is the poetry of the foot.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Sculptors are obliged to follow the manners of the painters, and to make many ample folds, which are unsufferable hardness, and more like a rock than a natural garment.
JOHN DRYDEN -
None, none descends into himself, to find The secret imperfections of his mind: But every one is eagle-ey’d to see Another’s faults, and his deformity.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Repentance is but want of power to sin.
JOHN DRYDEN -
But how can finite grasp Infinity?
JOHN DRYDEN -
All authors to their own defects are blind.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Better to hunt in fields, for health unbought, Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught, The wise, for cure, on exercise depend; God never made his work for man to mend.
JOHN DRYDEN -
A narrow mind begets obstinacy; we do not easily believe what we cannot see.
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 -
Let grace and goodness be the principal loadstone of thy affections.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Love and Time with reverence use, Treat them like a parting friend: Nor the golden gifts refuse Which in youth sincere they send: For each year their price is more, And they less simple than before.
JOHN DRYDEN -
Be slow to resolve, but quick in performance.
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 -
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 -
By education most have been misled.
JOHN DRYDEN