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Disputed quotes — John Dryden

1631–1700 England

← All quotes by John Dryden

246 quotes

No toil, no hardship can restrain
Ambitious man inured to pain;
The more confined, the more he tries,
And at forbidden quarry flies.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

With joy th’ ambitious youth his mother heard,
And, eager, for the journey soon prepared;
He longs the world beneath him to survey,
To guide the chariot, and to give the day.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

To cure their mad ambition, they were sent
To rule a distant province, each alone:
What could a careful father more have done?

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Casting nets were spread in shallow brooks,
Drags in the deep, and baits were hung on hooks.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Grant her, besides, of noble blood that ran
In ancient veins, ere heraldry began.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Shadwell till death true dulness would maintain;
And, in his father’s right and realm’s defence,
Ne’er would have peace with wit, nor truce with sense.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

All authors to their own defects are blind;
Hadst thou but, Janus-like, a face behind,
To see the people, what splay mouths they make,
To mark their fingers pointed at thy back.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Autumn succeeds, a sober, tepid age,
Nor froze with fear, nor boiling into rage;
Last, Winter creeps along with tardy pace,
Sour is his front, and furrow’d is his face.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

For he who covets gain in such excess
Does by dumb signs himself as much express
As if in words at length he show’d his mind.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

A cloud of smoke envelops either host,
And all at once the combatants are lost:
Darkling they join adverse, and shock unseen,
Coursers with coursers justing, mén with men.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

These I wielded while my bloom was warm,
Ere age unstrung my nerves, or time o’er-snow’d my head.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

The royal husbandman appear’d,
And plough’d, and sow’d, and till’d;
The thorns he rooted out, the rubbish clear’d,
And blest th’ obedient field.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

If a wood of leaves o’ershade the tree,
In vain the hind shall vex the threshing floor,
For empty chaff and straw will be thy store.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

She in pens his flocks will fold.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

In shallow furrows vines securely grow.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

The vineyard must employ thy sturdy steer
To turn the glebe; besides thy daily pain
To break the clods, and make the surface plain.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Some steep their seeds, and some in cauldrons boil
O’er gentle fires; the exuberant juice to drain,
And swell the flatt’ring husks with fruitful grain.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Mark well the flow’ring almonds in the wood:
If od’rous blooms the bearing branches load,
The glebe will answer to the sylvan reign:
Great heats will follow, and large crops of grain.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

When continued rain
The lab’ring husband in his house restrain,
Let him forecast his work with timely care,
Which else is huddled when the skies are fair.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

And oft whole sheets descend of sluicy rain,
Suck’d by the spungy clouds from off the main:
The lofty skies at once come pouring down,
The promised crop and golden labours drown.

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.