John Dryden: Quotes about God

“Give, you gods,
Give to your boy, your Caesar,
The rattle of a globe to play withal,
This gewgaw world, and put him cheaply off;
I'll not be pleased with less than Cleopatra.”

John Dryden All for Love

Act II, scene II
All for Love (1678)

God , World , Boy

“The wise, for cure, on exercise depend;
God never made his work for man to mend.”

John Dryden

Epistle to John Driden of Chesterton (1700), lines 92–95.
Context: Better to hunt in fields, for health unbought,
Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught.
The wise, for cure, on exercise depend;
God never made his work for man to mend.

God , Exercises , Dependency

“If all the world be worth thy winning.
Think, oh think it worth enjoying:
Lovely Thaïs sits beside thee,
Take the good the gods provide thee.”

John Dryden

Source: Alexander’s Feast http://www.bartleby.com/40/265.html (1697), l. 97–106.
Context: Softly sweet, in Lydian measures,
Soon he soothed his soul to pleasures.
War, he sung, is toil and trouble;
Honor but an empty bubble;
Never ending, still beginning,
Fighting still, and still destroying.
If all the world be worth thy winning.
Think, oh think it worth enjoying:
Lovely Thaïs sits beside thee,
Take the good the gods provide thee.

Love , God , World , Thinking

“With all this bulk there's nothing lost in Og,
For every inch that is not fool is rogue :
A monstrous mass of fuul corrupted matter,
As all the devils had spew'd to make the baiter.
When wine has given him courage to blaspheme,
He curses God, but God before curst him;
And, if man could have reason, none has more.
That made his paunch so rich, and him so poor.”

John Dryden Absalom and Achitophel

Pt. II, lines 462–469.
Absalom and Achitophel (1681)

God , Fools , Courage , Wine

“So over violent, or over civil,
That every man with him was God or Devil.”

John Dryden book The Hind and the Panther

Absalom and Achitophel. Part i. Line 557.
The Hind and the Panther (1687)

God

“With ravished ears
The monarch hears;
Assumes the god,
Affects the nod,
And seems to shake the spheres.”

John Dryden

Source: Alexander’s Feast http://www.bartleby.com/40/265.html (1697), l. 37–41.

God

“Railing and praising were his usual themes;
And both, to show his judgment, in extremes;
So over violent, or over civil,
That every man with him was God or devil.”

John Dryden Absalom and Achitophel

Pt. I, lines 554–557.
Absalom and Achitophel (1681)

God

“Ye realms, yet unreveal'd to human sight,
Ye gods who rule the regions of the night,
Ye gliding ghosts, permit me to relate
The mystic wonders of your silent state!”

John Dryden

Aeneis, Book VI, lines 374–377.
The Works of Virgil (1697)

God , Night

“For those whom God to ruin has design'd,
He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind.”

John Dryden book The Hind and the Panther

Pt. III, line 2387.
The Hind and the Panther (1687)

God , Fate

“His tribe were God Almighty's gentlemen.”

John Dryden book The Hind and the Panther

Pt. I, line 645. Compare: Julius Hare, Guesses at Truth: "A Christian is God Almighty’s gentleman"; Edward Young, Night Thoughts, Night iv, line 788, "A Christian is the highest style of man".
The Hind and the Panther (1687)

God

“O gracious God! how far have we
Profaned thy heavenly gift of poesy!”

John Dryden

To the Pious Memory of Mrs. Anne Killegrew (1686), lines 56–57.

God

“Tis sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is God's plenty. We have our fore-fathers and great-grandames all before us, as they were in Chaucer's days; their general characters are still remaining in mankind, and even in England, though they are call'd by other names than those of Monks and Friars, and Canons, and Lady Abbesses, and Nuns: for mankind is ever the same, and nothing lost out of nature, though everything is altered.”

John Dryden book Fables, Ancient and Modern

Preface to the Fables.
Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700)

God , Nature

“Fate, and the dooming gods, are deaf to tears.”

John Dryden

Aeneis, Book VI, line 512.
The Works of Virgil (1697)

God , Fate , Tear