Successful crimes alone are justified.
—John Dryden
Topics: Crime
What brutal mischief sits upon his brow! He may be honest, but he looks damnation.
—John Dryden
The blushing beauties of a modest maid.
—John Dryden
Topics: Maidenhood
The love of liberty with life is given, And life itself the inferior gift of Heaven.
—John Dryden
Topics: Liberty
Love works a different way in different minds, the fool it enlightens and the wise it blinds.
—John Dryden
Topics: Love
Kings fight for empires, madmen for applause.
—John Dryden
Topics: Queens, Kings, Royalty
Repentance is but want of power to sin.
—John Dryden
Topics: Forgiveness, Repentance
A merry, dancing, drinking, laughing, quaffing, and unthinking time.
—John Dryden
Topics: Dancing
Self-defense is Nature’s eldest law.
—John Dryden
Topics: Security, Defense
Bets, at the first, were fool-traps, where the wise, like spiders, lay in ambush for the flies.
—John Dryden
Topics: Gambling
He who purposes to be an author, should first be a student.
—John Dryden
His voice attention still as midnight draws—his voice more gentle than the summer’s breeze.
—John Dryden
Want is a bitter and a hateful good, because its virtues are not understood; yet many things, impossible to thought, have been by need to full perfection brought; the daring of the soul proceeds from thence, sharpness of wit and active diligence; prudence at once, and fortitude it gives; and, if in patience taken, mends our lives.
—John Dryden
Topics: Poverty
For present joys are more to flesh and blood than a dull prospect of a distant good.
—John Dryden
Topics: Excitement, Value of Time, Joy, Time Management
Virtue in distress, and vice in triumph, make atheists of mankind.
—John Dryden
Topics: Atheism
Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow; he who would search for pearls must dive below.
—John Dryden
Topics: Value
The joys I have possessed are ever mine; out of thy reach, behind eternity, hid in the sacred treasure of the past, but blest remembrance brings them hourly back.
—John Dryden
Topics: Memory
Silence in times of suffering is the best.
—John Dryden
Topics: Silence
Youth should watch joys and shoot them as they fly.
—John Dryden
Topics: Youth
I have not joyed an hour since you departed, for public miseries, and for private fears; but this blest meeting has o’erpaid them all.
—John Dryden
Topics: Meeting
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
Topics: Resolve, Perseverance, Endurance
Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought, but genius must be born; and never can be taught.
—John Dryden
Topics: Genius
Men are but children of a larger growth; our appetites are as apt to change as theirs, and full as craving, too, and full as vain.
—John Dryden
Topics: Man, Maturity
Jealousy is like a polished glass held to the lips when life is in doubt; if there be breath it will catch the damp and show it.
—John Dryden
Topics: Jealousy
They never pardon who commit the wrong.
—John Dryden
Topics: Forgiveness
The sooner you treat your son as a man, the sooner he will be one.
—John Dryden
Topics: Parenting, Parents
Self-defense is Nature’s oldest law.
—John Dryden
Topics: Security, Defense, Self-Discovery
How can finite grasp infinity?
—John Dryden
Topics: Reason
Such subtle Covenants shall be made,
Till Peace it self is War in Masquerade.
—John Dryden
Most confidence has still most cause to doubt.
—John Dryden
Topics: Temptation
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Alexander Pope English Poet
- Francis Thompson English Poet
- Coventry Patmore English Writer
- Abraham Cowley English Poet
- Colley Cibber English Playwright
- John Milton English Poet
- Edmund Spenser English Poet
- Geoffrey Chaucer English Poet
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge English Poet
- John Masefield English Poet
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