Top 400 John Dryden Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “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

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

— John Dryden

253. “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

254. “Among our crimes oblivion may be set.”

— John Dryden

255. “By education most have been misled.”

— John Dryden

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

— John Dryden

257. “Successful crimes alone are justified.”

— John Dryden

258. “Reason saw not, till Faith sprung the Light.”

— John Dryden

259. “Silence in times of suffering is the best.”

— John Dryden

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

— John Dryden

261. “All heiresses are beautiful.”

— John Dryden

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

— John Dryden

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

— John Dryden

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

— John Dryden

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

— John Dryden

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

— John Dryden

267. “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

268. “I am resolved to grow fat, and look young till forty.”

— John Dryden

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

— John Dryden

Featured in: Reading Quotes

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

— John Dryden

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

— John Dryden

272. “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

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

— John Dryden

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

— John Dryden

276. “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

277. “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

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

— John Dryden

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

— John Dryden

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

— John Dryden

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

— John Dryden

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

— John Dryden

283. “Honor is but an empty bubble.”

— John Dryden

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

— John Dryden

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

— John Dryden

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

— John Dryden

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

— John Dryden

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

— John Dryden

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

— John Dryden

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

— John Dryden

291. “Of all the tyrannies on human kind the worst is that which persecutes the mind.”

— John Dryden

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

— John Dryden

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

— John Dryden

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

— John Dryden

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

— John Dryden

296. “Pride – Lord of human kind.”

— John Dryden

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

— John Dryden

298. “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

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

— John Dryden

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

— John Dryden