John Dryden Quotes

He trudged along unknowing what he sought, And whistled as he went, for want of thought.

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.

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.

Tis a good thing to laugh at any rate; and if a straw can tickle a man, it is an instrument of happiness.

They say everything in the world is good for something.

For they can conquer who believe they can.

Riches cannot rescue from the grave, which claims alike the monarch and the slave.

Content with poverty, my soul I arm; And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm.

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.

Fiction is of the essence of poetry as well as of painting; there is a resemblance in one of human bodies, things, and actions which are not real, and in the other of a true story by fiction.