Quotes
Quotes - Dryden
Above any Greek or Roman name.
And threat'ning France, plac'd like a painted Jove,
Kept idle thunder in his lifted hand.
Whate'er he did was done with so much ease,
In him alone 't was natural to please.
A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pygmy-body to decay,
And o'er-inform'd the tenement of clay.
A daring pilot in extremity;
Pleas'd with the danger, when the waves went high
He sought the storms.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.
And all to leave what with his toil he won
To that unfeather'd two-legged thing, a son.
Resolv'd to ruin or to rule the state.
And heaven had wanted one immortal song.
But wild Ambition loves to slide, not stand,
And Fortune's ice prefers to Virtue's land.
The people's prayer, the glad diviner's theme,
The young men's vision, and the old men's dream!
Behold him setting in his western skies,
The shadows lengthening as the vapours rise.
Than a successive title long and dark,
Drawn from the mouldy rolls of Noah's ark.
Not only hating David, but the king.
Who think too little, and who talk too much.
A man so various, that he seem'd to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome;
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts, and nothing long;
But in the course of one revolving moon
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.
So over violent, or over civil,
That every man with him was God or Devil.
His tribe were God Almighty's gentlemen.
Him of the western dome, whose weighty sense
Flows in fit words and heavenly eloquence.
Beware the fury of a patient man.
Made still a blund'ring kind of melody;
Spurr'd boldly on, and dashed through thick and thin,
Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in.
For every inch that is not fool is rogue.
Men met each other with erected look,
The steps were higher that they took;
Friends to congratulate their friends made haste,
And long inveterate foes saluted as they pass'd.
For truth has such a face and such a mien,
As to be lov'd needs only to be seen.
And kind as kings upon their coronation day.
For those whom God to ruin has design'd,
He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind.
