John Dryden

Plots, true or false, are necessary things, / To raise up commonwealths, and ruin kings.

Not to ask is not to be denied.

Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow; / He who would search for pearls must dive below.

Pity melts the mind to love.

As poetry is the harmony of words, so music is that of notes.

Raw in the fields the rude militia swarms, / Mouth without hands; maintained at vast expense, / In peace a charge, in war a weak defence.

Heaven be thanked, we live in such an age, / When no man dies for love, but on the stage.

When I consider life, tis all a cheat. / Yet fooled with hope, men favour the deceit.

Jealousy’s a proof of love, / But ’tis a weak and unavailing medicine; / It puts out the disease and makes it show, / But has no power to cure.

Desire of greatness is a godlike sin.

Forgiveness to the injured does belong; / For they ne’er pardon who have done the wrong.

Reason to rule but mercy to forgive: / The first is law, the last prerogative.

Our marriage is dead, when the pleasure is fled: / 'Twas pleasure first made it an oath.

How easy ’tis, when Destiny proves kind, / With full-spread sails to run before the wind!

The most may err as grossly as the few.

Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have lived today.

None are so busy as the fool and knave.

And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm.

Dreams are but interludes that fancy makes... Sometimes forgotten things, long cast behind Rush forward in the brain, and come to mind.

Better shun the bait, then struggle in the snare.

The conscience of a people is their power.

But far more numerous was the herd of such, who think too little and who talk too much.

We must beat the iron while it is hot, but we may polish it at leisure.

Set all things in their own peculiar place, and know that order is the greatest grace.

Let grace and goodness be the principal loadstone of thy affections. For love which hath ends, will have an end; whereas that which is founded on true virtue, will always continue.

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

War seldom enters but where wealth allures.

Can flowers but droop in absence of the sun, Which waked their sweets?

Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet.

He needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature: he looked inwards, and found her there.

’Tis sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is God’s plenty.

The famous rules, which the French call Des Trots Onitez, or, the Three Unities, which ought to be observed in every regular play; namely, of Time, Place, and Action.

Arms, and the man I sing.

She knows her man, and when you rant and swear,

Can draw you to her with a single hair.

But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.