Category: John Dryden

Ill habits gather by unseen degrees,–
As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.

Look round the habitable world: how few
Know their own good, or knowing it, pursue.

Welcome as kindly showers to the long parched earth.

Men met each other with erected look,
The steps were higher that they took;
Friends to congratulate their friends made haste,
And long inveterate foes saluted as they pass’d.

Our souls sit close and silently within,
And their own web from their own entrails spin;
And when eyes meet far off, our sense is such,
That, spider-like, we feel the tenderest touch.

‘Tis good to laugh at any rate; and if a straw can tickle a man, it is an instrument of happiness.

Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;
He who would search for pearls must dive below.

I have not joyed an hour since you departed, for public miseries, and for private fears; but this blest meeting has o’erpaid them all.

A very merry, dancing, drinking,
Laughing, quaffing, and unthinking time.

Men are but children of a larger growth.

Fool, not to know that love endures no tie,
And Jove but laughs at lovers’ perjury.

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

And torture one poor word ten thousand ways.

For Art may err, but Nature cannot miss.