Skip to content

Quotes from Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson — John Dryden

1631–1700 England

← All quotes by John Dryden

246 quotes

Would you the advantage of the fight delay
If, striking first, you were to win the day?

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Age has not yet
So shrunk my sinews, or so chill’d my veins,
But conscious virtue in my breast remains.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Great Fletcher never treads in buskins here,
Nor greater Jonson dares in socks appear.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

The vain endurances of life,
And they who most perform’d, and promised less,
Ev’n Short and Hobbes, forsook th’ unequal strife.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

That good man, who drank the pois’nous draught
With mind serene, and could not wish to see
His vile accuser drink as deep as he.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

The unhappy man who once has trail’d a pen
Lives not to please himself, but other men;
Is always drudging with his life and blood,
Yet only eats and drinks what you think good.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

His friends beheld, and pity’d him in vain,
For what advice can ease a lover’s pain?
Absence, the best expedient they could find,
Might save the fortune, if not cure the mind.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Such is the poet’s lot: what happier fate
Does on the works of grave historians wait!
More time they spend, in-greater toils engage:
Their volumes swell beyond the thousandth page.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Why asks he what avails him not in fight,
And would but cumber and retard his flight,
In which his only excellence is placed?
You give him death that interrupt his haste.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Thus then my loved Euryalus appears;
He looks the prop of my declining years.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

When the Nile from Pharian fields is fled,
The fat manure with heay’nly fire is warm’d.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Apollo check’d my pride, and bade me feed
My fatt’ning flocks, nor dare beyond the reed.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Let Araby extol her happy coast,
Her fragrant flow’rs, her trees with precious tears,
Her second harvests.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

At harvest-home, and on the shearing day,
When he should thanks to Pan and Pales pay.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

The wiser madman did for virtue toil
A thorny, or at least a barren, soil.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Leave to fathom such high points as these,
Nor be ambitious, ere the time, to please;
Unseasonably wise, till age and cares
Have form’d thy soul to manage great affairs.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Were virtue by descent, a noble name
Could never villanize his father’s fame;
But, as the first, the last of all the line
Would, like the sun, ev’n in descending, shine.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

That we may angels seem, we paint them elves,
And are but satires to set up ourselves.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Anger would indite
Such woful stuff as I or Shadwell write.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

His knowledge in the noblest useful arts
Was such dead authors could not give,
But habitudes with those who live.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: John Dryden (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.