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Three poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn:
The first in majesty of thought surpass’d,
The next in gracefulness; in both the last.
The force of nature could no further go:
To make a third she join’d the other two.

— John Dryden Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

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Poetry

More quotes by John Dryden

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

Aureng-Zebe (1676)

Whate’er he did, was done with so much ease,
In him alone 'twas natural to please.

Absalom and Achitophel (1681)

Love conquers all, and we must yield to Love.

The Works of Virgil (1697)

What passion cannot Music raise and quell?

A Song for St. Cecilia's Day (1687)

Whatever is, is in its causes just.

Œdipus (1679)

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There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Nature (1836)

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.

T. S. Eliot Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)

Poetry, unlike oratory, should not aim at clarity...but be dense with meaning, 'something to be chewed and digested'.

George Chapman Ovid's Banquet of Sense (1595)

I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.

Michael Faraday

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: John Dryden (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.