Top 400 John Dryden Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “We first make our habits, then our habits make us.”

— John Dryden

2. “Beware the fury of a patient man.”

— John Dryden

Featured in: Revenge Quotes

3. “I’m a little wounded, but I am not slain; I will lay me down to bleed a while. Then I’ll rise and fight again.”

— John Dryden

4. “Dead men tell no tales.”

— John Dryden

5. “They think too little who talk too much.”

— John Dryden

6. “For all the happiness mankind can gain Is not in pleasure, but in rest from pain.”

— John Dryden

7. “Sweet is pleasure after pain.”

— John Dryden

8. “None but the brave deserve the fair.”

— John Dryden

9. “For they conquer who believe they can.”

— John Dryden

10. “Self-defense is Nature’s eldest law.”

— John Dryden

11. “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.”

— John Dryden

Featured in: Anger Quotes

12. “Home is the sacred refuge of our life.”

— John Dryden

13. “Here lies my wife: here let her lie! Now she’s at rest, and so am I.”

— John Dryden

14. “Mighty things from small beginnings grow.”

— John Dryden

15. “All, as they say, that glitters is not gold.”

— John Dryden

16. “Secret guilt is by silence revealed.”

— John Dryden

17. “Democracy is essentially anti-authoritarian – that is, it not only demands the right but imposes the responsibility of thinking for ourselves.”

— John Dryden

18. “Faith is to believe what you do not yet see: the reward for this faith is to see what you believe. Thus all below is strength, and all above is grace.”

— John Dryden

19. “Words are but pictures of our thoughts.”

— John Dryden

20. “Virtue in distress, and vice in triumph make atheists of mankind.”

— John Dryden

21. “Who climbs the grammar-tree, distinctly knows Where noun, and verb, and participle grows.”

— John Dryden

22. “Jealousy is the jaundice of the soul.”

— John Dryden

23. “Second thoughts, they say, are best.”

— John Dryden

24. “Be slow to resolve, but quick in performance.”

— John Dryden

25. “O freedom, first delight of human kind!”

— John Dryden

26. “Rich the treasure, Sweet the pleasure,- Sweet is pleasure after pain.”

— John Dryden

27. “My heart’s so full of joy, That I shall do some wild extravagance Of love in public; and the foolish world, Which knows not tenderness, will think me mad.”

— John Dryden

28. “Love reckons hours for months, and days for years; and every little absence is an age.”

— John Dryden

29. “Truth is the foundation of all knowledge and the cement of all societies.”

— John Dryden

30. “Death in itself is nothing; but we fear to be we know not what, we know not where.”

— John Dryden

31. “Murder may pass unpunishd for a time, But tardy justice will oertake the crime.”

— John Dryden

32. “He who would search for pearls must dive below.”

— John Dryden

33. “Desire of greatness is a godlike sin.”

— John Dryden

34. “Hushed as midnight silence.”

— John Dryden

35. “If passion rules, how weak does reason prove!”

— John Dryden

36. “Zeal, the blind conductor of the will.”

— John Dryden

37. “Satire is a kind of poetry in which human vices are reprehended.”

— John Dryden

38. “Set all things in their own peculiar place, and know that order is the greatest grace.”

— John Dryden

39. “He has not learned the first lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.”

— John Dryden

40. “Confidence is the feeling we have before knowing all the facts.”

— John Dryden

41. “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.”

— John Dryden

42. “Music, Music for a while Shall all your cares beguile. Alexander’s Feast.”

— John Dryden

43. “Dancing is the poetry of the foot.”

— John Dryden

44. “A fiery soul, which, working out its way, Fretted the pygmy-body to decay, And o’er-inform’d the tenement of clay. A daring pilot in extremity; Pleas’d with the danger, when the waves went high He sought the storms.”

— John Dryden

45. “Errors like straws upon the surface flow, Who would search for pearls to be grateful for often must dive below.”

— John Dryden

46. “Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well; the chiefest part of which is to observe those excellencies which delight a reasonable reader.”

— John Dryden

47. “It is sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is God’s plenty.”

— John Dryden

48. “The elephant is never won by anger; nor must that man who would reclaim a lion take him by the teeth.”

— John Dryden

49. “Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide.”

— John Dryden

50. “Politicians neither love nor hate.”

— John Dryden