John Dryden Quotes

Tremble ye Nations who secure before, 115 Laught at those Arms that’ gainst our selves we bore;

All human things are subject to decay

Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

Oh, let me die but with you!
Is that a hard request?

Next living with you,
'Tis all that Heaven can give.

Music is the exultation of Poetry. Both of them may excel apart but... are most excellent when they are joined.

What tell'st thou me of Egpyt?

So easie still it proves in Factious Times,
With publick Zeal to cancel private Crimes:
How safe is Treason, and how sacred ill,
Where none can sin against the Peoples Will:
Where Crouds can wink; and no offence be known,
Since in anothers guilt they find their own.

So love with phantoms cheats our longing eyes,
Which hourly seeing never satisfies;
Our hands pull nothing from the parts they strain,
But wander o’er the lovely limbs in vain:
Nor when the youthful pair more closely join,
When hands in hands they lock, and thighs in thighs they twine,
Just in the raging foam of full desire,
When both press on, both murmur, both expire,
They gripe, they squeeze, their humid tongues they dart,
As each would force their way to t’other’s heart –
In vain; they only cruise about the coast,
For bodies cannot pierce, nor be in bodies lost.

The prostrate lover, when he lowest lies,
But stoops to conquer, and but kneels to rise.

Give, you gods,
Give to your boy, your Caesar,
This rattle of a globe to play withal,
This gewgaw world, and put him cheaply off:
I'll not be pleased with less than Cleopatra.

But, when to Sin our byast Nature leans,
The carefull Devil is still at hand with means;
And providently Pimps for ill desires:
The Good old Cause reviv'd, a Plot requires.
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up Common-wealths, and ruin Kings.

NOW with a general Peace the World was blest, While Ours, a World divided from the rest,

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.

But O! what art can teach,
What human voice can reach,
The sacred organ's praise?