About Author : John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator and playwright, who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.
John Dryden Quotations and Sayings
The people have a right supremeTo make their kings for Kings are made for them.All Empire is no more than Pow’r in TrustWhich when resum’d can be no longer just.Successionm for the general good design’dIn its own wrong a Nation cannot bind.
Beware the fury of a patient man.
All human things are subject to decayAnd when Fate summons monarchs must obeyThis Flecknoe found who like Augustus youngWas call’d to empire and had govern’d longIn prose and verse was own’d without disputeThrough all the realms of nonsense absolute.
We first make our habits and then our habits make us.
Reason to rule but mercy to forgive The first is the law the last prerogative.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied And thin partitions do their bounds divide.
Death in itself is nothing but we fear To be we know not what we know not where.
How can finite grasp infinity.
The gates of Hell are open night and day Smooth the descent and easy is the way But to return and view the cheerful skies In this the task and mighty labor lies.
Look around the habitable world how few Know their own good or knowing it pursue.
Men are but children of a larger growth Our appetites as apt to change as theirs And full as craving too and full as vain.
Pains of love be sweeter far Than all other pleasures are.
A mob is the scum that rises upmost when the nation boils.
You see through love and that deludes your sight As what is straight seems crooked through the water.
Happy the man and happy he alone He who can call to-day his own He who secure within can say Tomorrow do thy worst for I have lived today.
And virtue though in rags will keep me warm.
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.
They think to little who talk to much.
We must beat the iron while it is hot but we may polish it at leisure.
Set all things in their own peculiar place and know that order is the greatest grace.
But far more numerous was the herd of such Who think too little and who talk too much.
Better shun the bait than struggle in the snare.
The conscience of a people is their power.