Top 400 John Dryden Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “Among our crimes oblivion may be set.”

— John Dryden

252. “At home the hateful names of parties cease, And factious souls are wearied into peace.”

— John Dryden

253. “Many things impossible to thought have been by need to full perfection brought.”

— John Dryden

254. “All heiresses are beautiful.”

— John Dryden

255. “If you are for a merry jaunt, I will try, for once, who can foot it farthest.”

— John Dryden

256. “Only man clogs his happiness with care, destroying what is with thoughts of what may be.”

— John Dryden

257. “Successful crimes alone are justified.”

— John Dryden

258. “Whatever is, is in its causes just.”

— John Dryden

259. “My whole life Has been a golden dream of love and friendship.”

— John Dryden

260. “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.”

— John Dryden

261. “I am reading Jonson’s verses to the memory of Shakespeare; an insolent, sparing, and invidious panegyric...”

— John Dryden

262. “I strongly wish for what I faintly hope; like the daydreams of melancholy men, I think and think in things impossible, yet love to wander in that golden maze.”

— John Dryden

263. “The soft complaining flute, In dying notes, discovers The woes of hopeless lovers.”

— John Dryden

264. “I am resolved to grow fat and look young till forty, and then slip out of the world with the first wrinkle and the reputation of five-and-twenty.”

— John Dryden

265. “He was exhaled; his great Creator drew His spirit, as the sun the morning dew.”

— John Dryden

266. “What, start at this! when sixty years have spread. Their grey experience o’er thy hoary head? Is this the all observing age could gain? Or hast thou known the world so long in vain?”

— John Dryden

267. “He who would pry behind the scenes oft sees a counterfeit.”

— John Dryden

268. “I feel my sinews slackened with the fright, and a cold sweat trills down all over my limbs, as if I were dissolving into water.”

— John Dryden

269. “Imitation pleases, because it affords matter for inquiring into the truth or falsehood of imitation, by comparing its likeness or unlikeness with the original.”

— John Dryden

270. “By education most have been misled.”

— John Dryden

271. “The scum that rises upmost, when the nation boils.”

— John Dryden

272. “A brave man scorns to quarrel once a day; Like Hectors in at every petty fray.”

— John Dryden

273. “From plots and treasons Heaven preserve my years, But save me most from my petitioners. Unsatiate as the barren womb or grave; God cannot grant so much as they can crave.”

— John Dryden

274. “Forgiveness to the injured does belong; but they ne’er pardon who have done wrong.”

— John Dryden

275. “From Harmony, from heav’nly Harmony. This universal Frame began.”

— John Dryden

276. “To die for faction is a common evil, But to be hanged for nonsense is the devil.”

— John Dryden

277. “Woman’s honor is nice as ermine; it will not bear a soil.”

— John Dryden

278. “War seldom enters but where wealth allures.”

— John Dryden

279. “Virgil, above all poets, had a stock which I may call almost inexhaustible, of figurative, elegant, and sounding words.”

— John Dryden

280. “The good we have enjoyed from Heaven’s free will, and shall we murmur to endure the ill?”

— John Dryden

281. “A lively faith will bear aloft the mind, and leave the luggage of good works behind.”

— John Dryden

282. “Imagining is in itself the very height and life of poetry, which, by a kind of enthusiasm or extraordinary emotion of the soul, makes it seem to us that we behold those things which the poet paints.”

— John Dryden

283. “To draw true beauty shows a master’s hand.”

— John Dryden

284. “I never saw any good that came of telling truth.”

— John Dryden

285. “And, dying, bless the hand that gave the blow.”

— John Dryden

286. “Boldness is a mask for fear, however great.”

— John Dryden

287. “Love is a child that talks in broken language, yet then he speaks most plain.”

— John Dryden

288. “Love is a passion which kindles honor into noble acts.”

— John Dryden

289. “New vows to plight, and plighted vows to break.”

— John Dryden

290. “Or hast thou known the world so long in vain?”

— John Dryden

291. “Restless at home, and ever prone to range.”

— John Dryden

292. “Honor is but an empty bubble.”

— John Dryden

293. “Ever a glutton, at another’s cost, But in whose kitchen dwells perpetual frost.”

— John Dryden

294. “Keen appetite And quick digestion wait on you and yours.”

— John Dryden

295. “Satire among the Romans, but not among the Greeks, was a bitter invective poem.”

— John Dryden

296. “Pride – Lord of human kind.”

— John Dryden

297. “There’s a proud modesty in merit; averse from asking, and resolved to pay ten times the gifts it asks.”

— John Dryden

298. “For danger levels man and brute And all are fellows in their need.”

— John Dryden

299. “The propriety of thoughts and words, which are the hidden beauties of a play, are but confusedly judged in the vehemence of action.”

— John Dryden

300. “Uncertain whose the narrowest span, – the clown unread, or half-read gentleman.”

— John Dryden