John Dryden Quotes

• We must beat the iron while it is hot, but we may polish it at leisure.

  John Dryden

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• Let old Timotheus yield the prize, Or both divide the crown: He raised a mortal to the skies; She drew an angel down.

  John Dryden

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• Sighed and looked, and sighed again.

  John Dryden

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• War, he sung, is toil and trouble; Honour but an empty bubble. Never ending, still beginning, Fighting still, and still destroying, If the world be worth thy winning, Think, oh think, it worth enjoying.

  John Dryden

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• Revolving in his altered soul The various turns of chance below.

  John Dryden

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• Fallen from his high estate, And welt’ring in his blood: Deserted at his utmost need By those his former bounty fed; On the bare earth expos’d he lies, With not a friend to close his eyes.

  John Dryden

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• Drinking is the soldier’s pleasure; Rich the treasure; Sweet the pleasure; Sweet is pleasure after pain.

  John Dryden

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• With ravished ears The monarch hears, Assumes the god, Affects to nod, And seems to shake the spheres.

  John Dryden

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• Happy, happy, happy, pair! None but the brave, None but the brave, None but the brave deserves the fair.

  John Dryden

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• Thou tyrant, tyrant Jealousy, Thou tyrant of the mind!

  John Dryden

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• Ovid, the soft philosopher of love.

  John Dryden

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• A man may be capable, as Jack Ketch’s wife said of his servant, of a plain piece of work, a bare hanging; but to make a malefactor die sweetly was only belonging to her husband.

  John Dryden

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• Music, Music for a while Shall all your cares beguile.

  John Dryden

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• Fairest Isle, all isles excelling, Seat of pleasures, and of loves; Venus here will choose her dwelling, And forsake her Cyprian groves.

  John Dryden

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• That fairy kind of writing which depends only upon the force of imagination.

  John Dryden

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• Three poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpassed, The next in majesty, in both the last: The force of Nature could no farther go; To make a third, she joined the former two.

  John Dryden

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• For those whom God to ruin has designed, He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind.

  John Dryden

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• T’abhor the makers, and their laws approve, Is to hate traitors and the treason love.

  John Dryden

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• By education most have been misled; So they believe, because they so were bred. The priest continues what the nurse began, And thus the child imposes on the man.

  John Dryden

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• For present joys are more to flesh and blood Than a dull prospect of a distant good.

  John Dryden

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John Dryden (201)

Birth:	9th August, 1631
Death:	1st May, 1700
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Playwright, Poet

About

John Dryden was born in Aldwincle, Thrapston, Northamptonshire, England. He was an English poet, literary critic and playwright who was made England's first Poet Laureate in 1668. He earned a BA degree from Trinity College, Cambridge University in 1654. He wrote several poems include: Annus Mirabilis, Absalom and Achitophel, The Medall, MacFlecknoe, The Hind and the Panther, Eleonora, and Fables Ancient and Modern. He wrote several plays include: The Wild Gallant, The Indian Emperour, Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen, Tyrannick Love, The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards, Marriage A-la-Mode, Aureng-Zebe, All for Love, Oedipus, Don Sebastian, Amphitryon, and Love Triumphant.

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