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They, who would combat general authority with particular opinion, must first establish themselves a reputation of understanding better than other men.

John Dryden

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John Dryden
Age: 68 †
Born: 1631
Born: August 7
Died: 1700
Died: May 12
Hymnwriter
Literary Critic
Playwright
Poet
Translator
Aldwincle
Northamptonshire
Would
Authority
Men
Particular
Opinion
Understanding
Better
Establish
Firsts
Combat
First
Reputation
Must
General

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Men are but children of a larger growth, Our appetites as apt to change as theirs, And full as craving too, and full as vain.
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Light sufferings give us leisure to complain.
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Reason to rule, mercy to forgive: The first is law, the last prerogative. Life is an adventure in forgiveness.
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I am as free as nature first made man, Ere the base laws of servitude began, When wild in woods the noble savage ran.
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Fiction is of the essence of poetry as well as of painting there is a resemblance in one of human bodies, things, and actions which are not real, and in the other of a true story by fiction.
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Railing in other men may be a crime, But ought to pass for mere instinct in him: Instinct he follows and no further knows, For to write verse with him is to transprose.
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Interest makes all seem reason that leads to it.
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Mere poets are sottish as mere drunkards are, who live in a continual mist, without seeing or judging anything clearly. A man should be learned in several sciences, and should have a reasonable, philosophical and in some measure a mathematical head, to be a complete and excellent poet.
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Virtue in distress, and vice in triumph make atheists of mankind.
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