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Imitation pleases, because it affords matter for inquiring into the truth or falsehood of imitation, by comparing its likeness or unlikeness with the original.

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
Compare
Originals
Inquiring
Original
Affords
Please
Likeness
Truth
Comparing
Matter
Pleases
Falsehood
Imitation

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Interest makes all seem reason that leads to it.
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I feel my sinews slackened with the fright, and a cold sweat trills down all over my limbs, as if I were dissolving into water.
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Bacchus ever fair and young, Drinking joys did first ordain. Bachus's blessings are a treasure, Drinking is the soldier's pleasure, Rich the treasure, Sweet the pleasure- Sweet is pleasure after pain.
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The good we have enjoyed from Heaven's free will, and shall we murmur to endure the ill?
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He who would pry behind the scenes oft sees a counterfeit.
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For all have not the gift of martyrdom.
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For your ignorance is the mother of your devotion to me.
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Youth, beauty, graceful action seldom fail: But common interest always will prevail And pity never ceases to be shown To him who makes the people's wrongs his own.
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Long pains, with use of bearing, are half eased.
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When we view elevated ideas of Nature, the result of that view is admiration, which is always the cause of pleasure.
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Take not away the life you cannot give: For all things have an equal right to live.
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Virgil, above all poets, had a stock which I may call almost inexhaustible, of figurative, elegant, and sounding words.
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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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Love is love's reward.
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Mankind is ever the same, and nothing lost out of nature, though everything is altered.
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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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