Top 400 John Dryden Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “We must beat the iron while it is hot, but we may polish it at leisure.”

— John Dryden

52. “Possess your soul with patience.”

— John Dryden

53. “The end of satire is the amendment of vices by correction; and he who writes honestly is no more an enemy to the offender than the physician to the patient when he prescribes harsh remedies.”

— John Dryden

54. “And love’s the noblest frailty of the mind.”

— John Dryden

55. “The glorious lamp of heaven, the radiant sun, Is Nature’s eye.”

— John Dryden

56. “Learn to write well, or not to write at all.”

— John Dryden

57. “Railing and praising were his usual themes; and both showed his judgment in extremes. Either over violent or over civil, so everyone to him was either god or devil.”

— John Dryden

58. “But love’s a malady without a cure.”

— John Dryden

59. “Love works a different way in different minds, the fool it enlightens and the wise it blinds.”

— John Dryden

60. “Youth, beauty, graceful action seldom fail: But common interest always will prevail; And pity never ceases to be shown To him who makes the people’s wrongs his own.”

— John Dryden

61. “What passion cannot music raise and quell!”

— John Dryden

62. “God has endowed man with inalienable rights, among which are self-government, reason, and conscience. Man is properly self-governed only when he is guided rightly and governed by his Maker, divine Truth and Love.”

— John Dryden

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

— John Dryden

64. “And plenty makes us poor.”

— John Dryden

65. “Love is not in our choice but in our fate.”

— John Dryden

66. “The World to Bacon does not only owe it’s present knowledge, but its future too.”

— John Dryden

67. “An horrible stillness first invades our ear, And in that silence we the tempest fear.”

— John Dryden

68. “All delays are dangerous in war.”

— John Dryden

69. “Nothing to build, and all things to destroy.”

— John Dryden

70. “Better to hunt in fields, for health unbought, Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught, The wise, for cure, on exercise depend; God never made his work for man to mend.”

— John Dryden

71. “Every language is so full of its own proprieties that what is beautiful in one is often barbarous, nay, sometimes nonsense, in another.”

— John Dryden

72. “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

73. “Ill habits gather unseen degrees, as brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.”

— John Dryden

74. “To die is landing on some distant shore.”

— John Dryden

75. “Good sense and good nature are never separated; and good nature is the product of right reason.”

— John Dryden

76. “Order is the greatest grace.”

— John Dryden

77. “Damn’d neuters, in their middle way of steering, Are neither fish, nor flesh, nor good red herring.”

— John Dryden

78. “Thus all below is strength, and all above is grace.”

— John Dryden

79. “The trumpet’s loud clangor Excites us to arms.”

— John Dryden

80. “Deathless laurel is the victor’s due.”

— John Dryden

81. “That gloomy outside, like a rusty chest, contains the shoring treasure of a soul resolved and brave.”

— John Dryden

82. “Take the goods the gods provide thee.”

— John Dryden

83. “Prodigious actions may as well be done, by weaver’s issue, as the prince’s son.”

— John Dryden

84. “He who proposes to be an author should first be a student.”

— John Dryden

85. “All objects lose by too familiar a view.”

— John Dryden

86. “Music is inarticulate poesy.”

— John Dryden

87. “We find few historians who have been diligent enough in their search for truth; it is their common method to take on trust what they help distribute to the public; by which means a falsehood once received from a famed writer becomes traditional to posterity.”

— John Dryden

88. “The sooner you treat your son as a man, the sooner he will be one.”

— John Dryden

89. “Seas are the fields of combat for the winds; but when they sweep along some flowery coast, their wings move mildly, and their rage is lost.”

— John Dryden

90. “Merit challenges envy.”

— John Dryden

91. “Whistling to keep myself from being afraid.”

— John Dryden

92. “A thing well said will be wit in all languages.”

— John Dryden

93. “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 makea malefactordiesweetly was only belonging toher husband.”

— John Dryden

94. “None would live past years again, Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain; And, from the dregs of life, think to receive, What the first sprightly running could not give.”

— John Dryden

95. “Jealousy’s a proof of love, But ’tis a weak and unavailing medicine; It puts out the disease and makes it show, But has no power to cure.”

— John Dryden

96. “Tis Fate that flings the dice, And as she flings Of kings makes peasants, And of peasants kings.”

— John Dryden

97. “He is a perpetual fountain of good sense.”

— John Dryden

98. “Mankind is ever the same, and nothing lost out of nature, though everything is altered.”

— John Dryden

99. “But Shakespeare’s magic could not copied be; Within that circle none durst walk but he.”

— John Dryden

100. “When I consider life, it is all a cheat. Yet fooled with hope, people favor this deceit.”

— John Dryden