John Dryden citáty

Prologue
Zdroj: All for Love (1678)
Kontext: Let those find fault whose wit's so very small,
They've need to show that they can think at all;
Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;
He who would search for pearls, must dive below.
Fops may have leave to level all they can;
As pigmies would be glad to lop a man.
Half-wits are fleas; so little and so light,
We scarce could know they live, but that they bite.

Tyrannick Love (1669), Act I, scene i.

Prologue
All for Love (1678)

Zdroj: Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700), Cymon and Iphigenia, Line 400.

Pt. I, lines 545–550.
Absalom and Achitophel (1681)
Varianta: A man so various, that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome;
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts, and nothing long;
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.

Pt. I, lines 173–174.
Absalom and Achitophel (1681)

Aureng-Zebe (1676), Act IV, scene i.

A Discourse concerning the Original and Progress of Satire (1693).
Kontext: How easie is it to call Rogue and Villain, and that wittily! But how hard to make a Man appear a Fool, a Blockhead, or a Knave, without using any of those opprobrious terms! To spare the grossness of the Names, and to do the thing yet more severely, is to draw a full Face, and to make the Nose and Cheeks stand out, and yet not to employ any depth of Shadowing. This is the Mystery of that Noble Trade, which yet no Master can teach to his Apprentice: He may give the Rules, but the Scholar is never the nearer in his practice. Neither is it true, that this fineness of Raillery is offensive. A witty Man is tickl'd while he is hurt in this manner, and a Fool feels it not. The occasion of an Offence may possibly be given, but he cannot take it. If it be granted that in effect this way does more Mischief; that a Man is secretly wounded, and though he be not sensible himself, yet the malicious World will find it for him: yet there is still a vast difference betwixt the slovenly Butchering of a Man, and the fineness of a stroke that separates the Head from the Body, and leaves it standing in its place.

On Fortune; Book III, Ode 29, lines 81–87.
Imitation of Horace (1685)
Kontext: I can enjoy her while she's kind;
But when she dances in the wind,
And shakes the wings and will not stay,
I puff the prostitute away:
The little or the much she gave is quietly resign'd:
Content with poverty, my soul I arm;
And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm.

St. 1.
A Song for St. Cecilia's Day http://www.englishverse.com/poems/a_song_for_st_cecilias_day_1687 (1687)
Kontext: From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
When nature underneath a heap
Of jarring atoms lay,
And could not heave her head,
The tuneful voice was heard from high,
'Arise, ye more than dead!'
Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry,
In order to their stations leap,
And Music's power obey.
From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
From harmony to harmony
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in Man.

Epistle to John Driden of Chesterton (1700), lines 92–95.
Kontext: 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.

Part 1, Act I, scene i.
The Conquest of Granada (1669-1670)
Kontext: I am as free as Nature first made man,
Ere the base laws of servitude began,
When wild in woods the noble savage ran.

Zdroj: Alexander’s Feast http://www.bartleby.com/40/265.html (1697), l. 97–106.
Kontext: 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.

Britannia Rediviva (1688), line 1.
Kontext: Our vows are heard betimes! and Heaven takes care
To grant, before we can conclude the prayer:
Preventing angels met it half the way,
And sent us back to praise, who came to pray.

Book III, Ode 29, lines 69–72.
Imitation of Horace (1685)
Kontext: Be fair, or foul, or rain, or shine,
The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.
Not heaven itself upon the past has power;
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

Zdroj: Alexander’s Feast http://www.bartleby.com/40/265.html (1697), l. 12–15.

Religio Laici (1682).
Kontext: More Safe, and much more modest 'tis, to say
God wou'd not leave Mankind without a way:
And that the Scriptures, though not every where
Free from Corruption, or intire, or clear,
Are uncorrupt, sufficient, clear, intire,
In all things which our needfull Faith require.
If others in the same Glass better see
'Tis for Themselves they look, but not for me:
For my Salvation must its Doom receive
Not from what others, but what I believe.

Prologue
All for Love (1678)
Kontext: What flocks of critics hover here to-day,
As vultures wait on armies for their prey,
All gaping for the carcase of a play!
With croaking notes they bode some dire event,
And follow dying poets by the scent.

Pt. I, line 999–1005. Compare Publius Syrus, Maxim 289, "Furor fit læsa sæpius patientia" ("An over-taxed patience gives way to fierce anger").
Absalom and Achitophel (1681)
Kontext: Oh that my Pow'r to Saving were confin’d:
Why am I forc’d, like Heav’n, against my mind,
To make Examples of another Kind?
Must I at length the Sword of Justice draw?
Oh curst Effects of necessary Law!
How ill my Fear they by my Mercy scan,
Beware the Fury of a Patient Man.

Works of John Dryden (1803) as quoted by P. Fleury Mottelay in William Gilbert of Colchester (1893)
Kontext: It is almost impossible to translate verbally and well at the same time; for the Latin (a most severe and compendious language) often expresses that in one word which either the barbarity or the narrowness of modern tongues cannot supply in more.... But since every language is so full of its own proprieties that what is beautiful in one is often barbarous, nay, sometimes nonsense, in another, it would be unreasonable to limit a translator to the narrow compass of his author's words; it is enough if he choose out some expression which does not vitiate the sense.

Essay of Dramatick Poesie (1668)
Kontext: To begin then with Shakespeare; he was the man who of all Modern, and perhaps Ancient Poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the Images of Nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily: when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learn'd; he needed not the spectacles of Books to read Nature; he look'd inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is every where alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of Mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his Comick wit degenerating into clenches; his serious swelling into Bombast. But he is alwayes great, when some great occasion is presented to him: no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of the Poets

Essay of Dramatick Poesie (1668)
Kontext: To begin then with Shakespeare; he was the man who of all Modern, and perhaps Ancient Poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the Images of Nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily: when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learn'd; he needed not the spectacles of Books to read Nature; he look'd inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is every where alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of Mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his Comick wit degenerating into clenches; his serious swelling into Bombast. But he is alwayes great, when some great occasion is presented to him: no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of the Poets

Constantine the Great (1684), Epilogue.
Zdroj: The Poetical Works of John Dryden

Pt. I, line 999–1005. Compare Publius Syrus, Maxim 289, "Furor fit læsa sæpius patientia" ("An over-taxed patience gives way to fierce anger").
Absalom and Achitophel (1681)
Varianta: Beware the Fury of a Patient Man.
Kontext: Oh that my Pow'r to Saving were confin’d:
Why am I forc’d, like Heav’n, against my mind,
To make Examples of another Kind?
Must I at length the Sword of Justice draw?
Oh curst Effects of necessary Law!
How ill my Fear they by my Mercy scan,
Beware the Fury of a Patient Man.

Pt. I, lines 159–172.
Zdroj: Absalom and Achitophel (1681)
Kontext: A daring pilot in extremity;
Pleas'd with the danger, when the waves went high
He sought the storms; but for a calm unfit,
Would steer too nigh the sands, to boast his wit.
Great wits are sure to madness near alli'd;
And thin partitions do their bounds divide:
Else, why should he, with wealth and honour blest,
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?
Punish a body which he could not please;
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?
And all to leave, what with his toil he won
To that unfeather'd, two-legg'd thing, a son:
Got, while his soul did huddled notions try;
And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy.

Act II, scene 1.
The Spanish Friar (1681)