“A satirical poet is the check of the laymen on bad priests.”
Preface to the Fables.
Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700)
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John Dryden 196
English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century 1631–1700Related quotes

On El Poema de Niágara of Pérez Bonalde (1883)

“All poets write bad poetry. Bad poets publish them, good poets burn them.”

“One cannot now say, the priest is as the people, for the truth is that the people are not so bad as the priest.”
Non est jam dicere, "Ut populus, sic sacerdos"; quia nec si populus, ut sacerdos.
In Conversione S. Pauli, Sermon 1, sect. 3; translation by James Spedding, in The Works of Francis Bacon (1860) vol. 12, p. 134
Ut populus, sic sacerdos is a quotation from Isaiah 24:2.

“Promises were like bad checks, easy to write and hard to cash.”
Source: Blind Lake (2003), Chapter 15 (p. 179)
Interview with Lidia Vianu http://lidiavianu.scriptmania.com/Michael%20Hamburger.htm

“One may quote bad poetry if it is by a great poet.”
On peut citer de mauvais vers, quand ils sont d'un grand poète.
Letter 4: Le Vicomte de Valmont to la Marquise de Merteuil. Trans. P.W.K. Stone (1961). http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Liaisons_dangereuses_-_Lettre_4
Les liaisons dangereuses (1782)

As quoted in "The Trump Era Is Al Franken’s Time to Shine" by Graham Vyse, in New Republic (2 February 2017) https://newrepublic.com/article/140342/trump-era-al-frankens-time-shine