Quotes by John Dryden

• Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought, but genius must be born; and never can be taught.
• Look around the inhabited world; how few know their own good, or knowing it, pursue.
• Forgiveness to the injured does belong; but they ne'er pardon who have done wrong.
• The first is the law, the last prerogative.
• There is a pleasure in being mad which none but madmen know.
• Shame on the body for breaking down while the spirit perseveres.
• Seek not to know what must not be reveal, for joy only flows where fate is most concealed. A busy person would find their sorrows much more; if future fortunes were known before!
• Roused by the lash of his own stubborn tail our lion now will foreign foes assail.
• Repentance is but want of power to sin.
• Reason is a crutch for age, but youth is strong enough to walk alone.
• Pains of love be sweeter far than all other pleasures are.
• Only man clogs his happiness with care, destroying what is with thoughts of what may be.
• Never was patriot yet, but was a fool.
• Love works a different way in different minds, the fool it enlightens and the wise it blinds.
• The sooner you treat your son as a man, the sooner he will be one.
• Love is love's reward.
• They that possess the prince possess the laws.
• Let grace and goodness be the principal loadstone of thy affections. For love which hath ends, will have an end; whereas that which is founded on true virtue, will always continue.
• Jealousy is the jaundice of the soul.
• It is madness to make fortune the mistress of events, because by herself she is nothing and is ruled by prudence.
• Ill habits gather unseen degrees, as brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.
• If you be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams - the more they are condensed the deeper they burn.
• Honor is but an empty bubble.
• He who would search for pearls must dive below.
• He has not learned the first lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.
• Happy the man, and happy he alone, he who can call today his own; he who, secure within, can say, tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
• Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide.
• God never made His work for man to mend.
• Go miser go, for money sell your soul. Trade wares for wares and trudge from pole to pole, So others may say when you are dead and gone. See what a vast estate he left his son.
• Genius must be born, and never can be taught.
• Love is not in our choice but in our fate.
• And plenty makes us poor.
• For truth has such a face and such a mien, as to be loved needs only to be seen.
• For they conquer who believe they can.
• 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.
• Even victors are by victories undone.
• Either be wholly slaves or wholly free.
• Death in itself is nothing; but we fear to be we know not what, we know not where.
• Dancing is the poetry of the foot.
• 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.
• But love's a malady without a cure.
• But far more numerous was the herd of such, Who think too little, and who talk too much.
• Boldness is a mask for fear, however great.
• Beware the fury of a patient man.
• The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves.
• 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.
• Self-defence is Nature's eldest law.
• And love's the noblest frailty of the mind.
• All things are subject to decay and when fate summons, monarchs must obey.
• All objects lose by too familiar a view.
• All heiresses are beautiful.
• A knock-down argument; 'tis but a word and a blow.
• You see through love, and that deludes your sight, As what is straight seems crooked through the water.
• Words are but pictures of our thoughts.
• When I consider life, it is all a cheat. Yet fooled with hope, people favor this deceit.
• What passions cannot music raise or quell?
• We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.
• War is the trade of Kings.
• Tomorrow do thy worst, I have lived today.
• To die is landing on some distant shore.
• Beauty, like ice, our footing does betray; Who can tread sure on the smooth, slippery way: Pleased with the surface, we glide swiftly on, And see the dangers that we cannot shun.