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John Dryden on Memorial Day

1631–1700 England

← All quotes by John Dryden

16 quotes

Death in itself is nothing; but we fear
To be we know not what, we know not where.

Aureng-Zebe (1676)

Like a led victim, to my death I'll go,
And, dying, bless the hand that gave the blow.

The Spanish Friar (1681)

War seldom enters but where wealth allures.

The Hind and the Panther (1687)

War, he sung, is toil and trouble;
Honour but an empty bubble.

Alexander's Feast (1697)

All delays are dangerous in war.

Tyrannick Love (1669)

Thus in a pageant-show a plot is made;
And peace itself is war in masquerade.

Absalom and Achitophel (1681)

Such subtle Covenants shall be made,
Till Peace it self is War in Masquerade.

Welcome, thou kind deceiver!
Thou best of thieves! who, with an easy key,
Dost open life, and, unperceived by us,
Even steal us from ourselves.

Heaven gave him all at once; then snatched away,
Ere mortals all his beauties could survey;
Just like the flower that buds and withers in a day.

He was exhal'd; his great Creator drew
His spirit, as the sun the morning dew.

Mouths without hands; maintained at vast expense,
In peace a charge, in war a weak defense:
Stout once a month they march, a blustering band,
And ever, but in times of need, at hand.

Cymon and Iphigenia (1700)

Of no distemper, of no blast he died,
But fell like autumn fruit that mellowed long —
Even wondered at, because he dropped no sooner.
Fate seemed to wind him up for fourscore years,
Yet freshly ran he on ten winters more;
Till like a clock worn out with eating time,
The wheels of weary life at last stood still.

Œdipus (1679)

So was she soon exhaled, and vanished hence;
As a sweet odour, of a vast expense.
She vanished, we can scarcely say she died.

The peaceful peasant to the wars is prest,
The fields lie fallow in inglorious rest.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Would I had been disposer of thy stars,
Thou shouldst have had thy wish, and died in wars.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Of no distemper, of no blast he died,
But fell like autumn fruit that mellow’d long;
Even wonder’d at, because he dropt no sooner.
Fate seem’d to wind him up for fourscore years;
Yet freshly ran he on ten winters more:
Till like a clock worn out with eating time,
The wheels of weary life at last stood still.

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.