Quotes
Quotes - Dryden
He rais'd a mortal to the skies,
She drew an angel down.
A very merry, dancing, drinking,
Laughing, quaffing, and unthinking time.
Fool, not to know that love endures no tie,
And Jove but laughs at lovers' perjury.
For Art may err, but Nature cannot miss.
And that one hunting, which the Devil design'd
For one fair female, lost him half the kind.
Old as I am, for ladies' love unfit,
The power of beauty I remember yet.
When beauty fires the blood, how love exalts the mind!
He trudg'd along unknowing what he sought,
And whistled as he went, for want of thought.
The fool of nature stood with stupid eyes
And gaping mouth, that testified surprise.
Love taught him shame; and shame, with love at strife,
Soon taught the sweet civilities of life.
She hugg'd the offender, and forgave the offence:
Sex to the last.
And raw in fields the rude militia swarms,
Mouths without hands; maintain'd at vast expense,
In peace a charge, in war a weak defence;
Stout once a month they march, a blustering band,
And ever but in times of need at hand.
Of seeming arms to make a short essay,
Then hasten to be drunk,--the business of the day.
Happy who in his verse can gently steer
From grave to light, from pleasant to severe.
Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call to-day his own;
He who, secure within, can say,
To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have liv'd to-day.
Not heaven itself upon the past has power;
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.
I can enjoy her while she's kind;
But when she dances in the wind,
And shakes the wings and will not stay,
I puff the prostitute away.
And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm.
Arms and the man I sing, who, forced by fate
And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate.
And new-laid eggs, which Baucis' busy care
Turn'd by a gentle fire and roasted rare.
Ill habits gather by unseen degrees,--
As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.
She knows her man, and when you rant and swear,
Can draw you to her with a single hair.
Look round the habitable world: how few
Know their own good, or knowing it, pursue.
Our souls sit close and silently within,
And their own web from their own entrails spin;
And when eyes meet far off, our sense is such,
That, spider-like, we feel the tenderest touch.
Thespis, the first professor of our art,
At country wakes sung ballads from a cart.
