Quote

Good sense and good-nature are never separated, though the ignorant world has thought otherwise. Good-nature, by which I mean beneficence and candor, is the product of right reason.

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
Thought
Separated
Reason
Ignorant
Right
Product
Mean
Otherwise
Good
Products
Never
Though
World
Sense
Beneficence
Nature
Candor

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The elephant is never won by anger nor must that man who would reclaim a lion take him by the teeth.
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The trumpet's loud clangor Excites us to arms.
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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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You see through love, and that deludes your sight, As what is straight seems crooked through the water.
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If we from wealth to poverty descend, Want gives to know the flatterer from the friend.
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Fowls, by winter forced, forsake the floods, and wing their hasty flight to happier lands.
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They live too long who happiness outlive.
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So over violent, or over civil that every man with him was God or Devil.
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They first condemn that first advised the ill.
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Time glides with undiscover'd haste The future but a length behind the past.
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How happy the lover, How easy his chain, How pleasing his pain, How sweet to discover He sighs not in vain.
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I trade both with the living and the dead, for the enrichment of our native language.
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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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The winds that never moderation knew, Afraid to blow too much, too faintly blew Or out of breath with joy, could not enlarge Their straighten'd lungs or conscious of their charge.
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Trust reposed in noble natures obliges them the more.
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Beauty, like ice, our footing does betray Who can tread sure on the smooth, slippery way: Pleased with the surface, we glide swiftly on, And see the dangers that we cannot shun.
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We must beat the iron while it is hot, but we may polish it at leisure.
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