John Dryden
The province of the soul is large enough to fill up every cranny of your time, and leave you much to answer for if one wretch be damned by your neglect.Collection: Soul
Imitation pleases, because it affords matter for inquiring into the truth or falsehood of imitation, by comparing its likeness or unlikeness with the original.Collection: Matter
Damn'd neuters, in their middle way of steering, Are neither fish, nor flesh, nor good red herring.Collection: Flesh
Humility and resignation are our prime virtues.Collection: Humility
Let cheerfulness on happy fortune wait.Collection: Waiting
Not to ask is not be denied.Collection: Silence
Ill fortune seldom comes alone.Collection: Fortune
When bounteous autumn rears her head, he joys to pull the ripened pear.Collection: Autumn
Thoughts cannot form themselves in words so horrid As can express my guilt.Collection: Guilt
Take the good the gods provide thee.Collection: Thee
[T]he Famous Rules which the French call, Des Trois Unitez , or, The Three Unities, which ought to be observ'd in every Regular Play; namely, of Time, Place, and Action.Collection: Play
Ye moon and stars, bear witness to the truth.Collection: Stars
The wretched have no friends.Collection: Friends
The gods, (if gods to goodness are inclined If acts of mercy touch their heavenly mind), And, more than all the gods, your generous heart, Conscious of worth, requite its own desert!Collection: Heart
And, dying, bless the hand that gave the blow.Collection: Blow
Music, Music for a while Shall all your cares beguile. Alexander's FeastCollection: Care
Heaven be thanked, we live in such an age, When no man dies for love, but on the stage.Collection: Love
The perverseness of my fate is such that he's not mine because he's mine too much.Collection: Fate
It is almost impossible to translate verbally and well at the same time; for the Latin (a most severe and compendious language) often expresses that in one word which either the barbarity or the narrowness of modern tongues cannot supply in more. ...But since every language is so full of its own proprieties that what is beautiful in one is often barbarous, nay, sometimes nonsense, in another, it would be unreasonable to limit a translator to the narrow compass of his author's words; it is enough if he choose out some expression which does not vitiate the sense.Collection: Beautiful
Pleasure never comes sincere to man; but lent by heaven upon hard usury.Collection: Men
Heroic poetry has ever been esteemed the greatest work of human nature.Collection: Poetry
Fortune, that with malicious joyDoes man her slave oppress,Proud of her office to destroy,Is seldom pleasd to bless.Collection: Men
The commendation of adversaries is the greatest triumph of a writer, because it never comes unless extorted.Collection: Triumph
Uncertain whose the narrowest span,--the clown unread, or half-read gentleman.Collection: Reading
Having mourned your sin, for outward Eden lost, find paradise within.Collection: Eden
Happy the man, and happy he alone, he, who can call today his own.Collection: Happiness
If one must be rejected, one succeed, make him my lord within whose faithful breast is fixed my image, and who loves me best.Collection: Faithful
Prodigious actions may as well be done, by weaver's issue, as the prince's son.Collection: Son
As poetry is the harmony of words, so music is that of notes.Collection: Music
Whistling to keep myself from being afraid.Collection: Courage
Raw in the fields the rude militia swarms, Mouth without hands; maintained at vast expense, In peace a charge, in war a weak defence.Collection: Military
My love's a noble madness.Collection: Love
I am reading Jonson’s verses to the memory of Shakespeare; an insolent, sparing, and invidious panegyric...Collection: Reading
Uncertain whose the narrowest span, – the clown unread, or half-read gentleman.Collection: Reading