John Dryden
54 quotations
Be slow to resolve, but quick in performance.
Self-defense is Nature's eldest law.
Nor is the people's judgment always true: the most may err as grossly as the few.
So over violent, or over civil that every man with him was God or Devil.
All objects lose by too familiar a view.
All things are subject to decay and when fate summons, monarchs must obey.
He has not learned the first lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.
Genius must be born, and never can be taught.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide.
Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought, but genius must be born; and never can be taught.
We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.
Ill habits gather unseen degrees, as brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.
Woman's honor is nice as ermine; it will not bear a soil.
All heiresses are beautiful.
Jealousy is the jaundice of the soul.
For present joys are more to flesh and blood than a dull prospect of a distant good.
Kings fight for empires, madmen for applause.
When I consider life, it is all a cheat. Yet fooled with hope, people favor this deceit.
Only man clogs his happiness with care, destroying what is, with thoughts of what may be.
Drinking is the soldier's pleasure.
Love works a different way in different minds, the fool it enlightens and the wise it blinds.
Love is love's reward.
Love is not in our choice but in our fate.
Thou strong seducer, Opportunity!
Pains of love be sweeter far than all the other pleasures are.