John Dryden: Quotes about love

John Dryden was English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century. Explore interesting quotes on love.
John Dryden: 392   quotes 21   likes

“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.”

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.

“Pains of love be sweeter far
Than all other pleasures are.”

Variant: Pains of love be sweeter far
Than all other pleasures are.

“Joy rul'd the day, and Love the night.”

Source: Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700), The Secular Masque (1700), Line 82.

“T' abhor the makers, and their laws approve,
Is to hate traitors and the treason love.”

Pt. III, lines 706–707.
The Hind and the Panther (1687)

“Love is lord of all, and is in all the same.”

Georgic III, lines 380.
The Works of Virgil (1697)

“For truth has such a face and such a mien
As to be loved needs only to be seen.”

Pt. I, lines 33–34.
The Hind and the Panther (1687)

“Old as I am, for ladies' love unfit,
The power of beauty I remember yet.”

Source: Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700), Cymon and Iphigenia, Lines 1–2.

“When beauty fires the blood, how love exalts the mind!”

Source: Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700), Cymon and Iphigenia, Line 41.

“And heaven had wanted one immortal song.
But wild Ambition loves to slide, not stand,
And Fortune's ice prefers to Virtue's land.”

Pt. I, lines 197–199. Compare Knolles, History (under a portrait of Mustapha I): "Greatnesse on Goodnesse loves to slide, not stand,/ And leaves, for Fortune’s ice, Vertue’s ferme land".
Absalom and Achitophel (1681)

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

Palamon and Arcite, book ii, line 758.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Love taught him shame; and shame, with love at strife,
Soon taught the sweet civilities of life.”

Source: Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700), Cymon and Iphigenia, Line 133.

“For pity melts the mind to love.”

Source: Alexander’s Feast http://www.bartleby.com/40/265.html (1697), l. 96.

“Love conquers all, and we must yield to Love.”

Pastoral X, lines 98–99.
The Works of Virgil (1697)

“Calms appear, when storms are past,
Love will have its hour at last.”

Source: Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700), The Secular Masque (1700), Lines 72–73.