"Chaucer followed Nature everywhere, but was never so bold to go beyond her."

John Dryden Literature See all quotes by John Dryden →

React to this quote

More by John Dryden

“he Famous Rules which the French call, Des Trois Unités, or, The Three Unities, which ought to be observ'd in every Regular Play; namely, of Time, Place, and Action.”

“Your ignorance is the mother of your devotion to me.”

“And doomed to death, though fated not to die.”

“This is the porcelain clay of humankind.”

“War seldom enters but where wealth allures.”

“A Heroick Poem, truly such, is undoubtedly the greatest Work which the Soul of Man is capable to perform.”

Resonant Thoughts

"You embody all that I was ever able to conceive of beauty and fearlessness and strange purity. Therefore it is evident I do not see in you merely Count Emmerick's third sister, but, instead, that agel…"

— James Branch Cabell

Literature1879–1958

#courage

"Even though homosexuality does not distance oneself from Islam, the Islam does not encourage individuals who have same-sex attraction to show their feelings in public."

— Salman al-Ouda

Entertainment1956

#courage

"In defining thought as an attribute Spinoza towered above any representative of mechanistic materialism and was at least two centuries in advance of his time in putting forward a thesis that Engels ex…"

— Baruch Spinoza

Philosophy1632–1677

#mind

"Those who believe that the laws of nature are the creations of a beneficent and all-wise Intelligence will see in this exception to the general law in the case of freezing water a striking evidence of…"

— Elisha Gray

Technology1835–1901

#faith