John Dryden

A man is to be cheated into passion, but to be reasoned into truth.

Leave writing plays, and choose for thy command Some peaceful province in acrostic land. There thou mayst wings display and altars raise, And torture one poor word ten thousand ways.

The rest to some faint meaning make pretense, But Shadwell never deviates into sense. Some beams of wit on other souls may fall, Strike through and make a lucid interval; But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray, His rising fogs prevail …

All human things are subject to decay, And, when fate summons, monarchs must obey.

Made still a blund'ring kind of melody; Spurred boldly on, and dashed through thick and thin, Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in. Free from all meaning, whether good or bad, And in one word, heroically mad.

Beware the fury of a patient man.

Never was patriot yet, but was a fool.

Nor is the people's judgment always true: The most may err as grossly as the few.

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

His tribe were God Almighty's gentlemen.

Every man with him was God or devil.

A man so various, that he seem’d to be Not one, but all mankind’s epitome; Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts, and nothing long; But in the course of one revolving moon Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and …

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

Not only hating David, but the king.

Self-defence is nature's eldest law

Better one suffer, than a nation grieve.

All empire is no more than power in trust.

The people's prayer, the glad diviner's theme, The young men's vision, and the old men's dream!

And heaven had wanted one immortal song. But wild ambition loves to slide, not stand, And fortune's ice prefers to virtue's land.

In friendship false, implacable in hate, Resolved to ruin, or to rule the state.

And all to leave, what with his toil he won To that unfeathered two-legged thing, a son.

Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide.

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

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