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John Dryden
(19 Aug 1631 - 12 May 1700)
English poet and critic.
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Science Quotes by John Dryden (17 quotes)
Gilbert shall live, till Load-stones cease to draw,
Or British Fleets the boundless Ocean awe.
Or British Fleets the boundless Ocean awe.
— John Dryden
'Of Miscellany Poems To my Honor’d Friend Dr. Charleton On his Learned and Useful Works; But more particularly his Treatise of Stone-Heng, By him restored to the true Founders', collected in Poetical Miscellanies: The Fifth Part (1704), 39. (Dr Walter Charleton was physician in ordinary to King Charles I. His treatise on Stonehenge was published in 1663.)
Arts and sciences in one and the same century have arrived at great perfection; and no wonder, since every age has a kind of universal genius, which inclines those that live in it to some particular studies; the work then, being pushed on by many hands, must go forward.
— John Dryden
In Samuel Austin Allibone, Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay (1880), 45.
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.
— John Dryden
'To my Honoured Kinsman, John Dryden', The English Poets (1901), Vol. 2, 491.
Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;
He who would search for pearls must dive below.
He who would search for pearls must dive below.
— John Dryden
Prologue, All For Love: Or, The World Well Lost (1678), collected in The Modern British Drama, (1811), Vol. 1, 337.
From Harmony, from heav’nly Harmony
This universal Frame began.
This universal Frame began.
— John Dryden
From 'A Song for St. Cecila's Day' (1687), lines 1-2, in James Kinsley (ed.), The Poems and Fables of John Dryden (1962), 422.
Genius must be born, and never can be taught.
— John Dryden
Louis Klopsch, Many Thoughts of Many Minds (1896), 106.
I trade both with the living and the dead for the enrichment of our native language.
— John Dryden
Is it not evident, in these last hundred years (when the Study of Philosophy has been the business of all the Virtuosi in Christendome) that almost a new Nature has been revealed to us? that more errours of the School have been detected, more useful Experiments in Philosophy have been made, more Noble Secrets in Opticks, Medicine, Anatomy, Astronomy, discover'd, than in all those credulous and doting Ages from Aristotle to us? So true it is that nothing spreads more fast than Science, when rightly and generally cultivated.
— John Dryden
Of Dramatic Poesie (1684 edition), lines 258-67, in James T. Boulton (ed.) (1964), 44
Mere poets are sottish as mere drunkards are, who live in a continual mist, without seeing or judging anything clearly. A man should be learned in several sciences, and should have a reasonable, philosophical and in some measure a mathematical head, to be a complete and excellent poet.
— John Dryden
In Notes and Observations on The Empress of Morocco (1674), 70.
Our physicians have observed that, in process of time, some diseases have abated of their virulence, and have, in a manner, worn out their malignity, so as to be no longer mortal.
— John Dryden
Perhaps a thousand other worlds that lie
Remote from us, and latent in the sky,
Are lightened by his beams, and kindly nurs’d.
Remote from us, and latent in the sky,
Are lightened by his beams, and kindly nurs’d.
— John Dryden
From 'Eleanora' (1692). Collected in Samuel Johnson (ed.), The Works of th Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1800), Vol. 3, 130.
Science distinguishes a Man of Honor from one of those Athletic Brutes whom undeservedly we call Heroes.
— John Dryden
The glorious lamp of heaven, the radiant sun,
Is Nature’s eye.
Is Nature’s eye.
— John Dryden
From 'Ovid's Metamorphoses' (Thirteenth Book), as translated in The Works of the English Poets, Vol. 16: The Poems of Dryden, Vol. 4 (1779), 129.
The longest tyranny that ever sway’d
Was that wherein our ancestors betray’d
Their free-born reason to the Stagirite [Aristotle],
And made his torch their universal light.
So truth, while only one suppli'd the state,
Grew scarce, and dear, and yet sophisticate.
Was that wherein our ancestors betray’d
Their free-born reason to the Stagirite [Aristotle],
And made his torch their universal light.
So truth, while only one suppli'd the state,
Grew scarce, and dear, and yet sophisticate.
— John Dryden
'To my Honour’d Friend, Dr Charleton' (1663), lines 1-6, in James Kinsley (ed.), The Poems and Fables of John Dryden (1962), 32.
The monarch oak, the patriarch of the trees,
Shoots rising up, and spreads by slow degrees:
Three centuries he grows, and three he stays
Supreme in state; and in three more decays.
Shoots rising up, and spreads by slow degrees:
Three centuries he grows, and three he stays
Supreme in state; and in three more decays.
— John Dryden
Then we upon our globe’s last verge shall go,
And view the ocean leaning on the sky:
From thence our rolling Neighbours we shall know,
And on the Lunar world securely pry.
And view the ocean leaning on the sky:
From thence our rolling Neighbours we shall know,
And on the Lunar world securely pry.
— John Dryden
'Annus Mirabilis The year of Wonders, 1666' (1667), lines 653-6, in James Kinsley (ed.), The Poems and Fables of John Dryden (1962), 81.
Who thinks all Science, as all Virtue, vain;
Who counts Geometry and numbers Toys…
Who counts Geometry and numbers Toys…
— John Dryden
In 'The First Satire of Persius', The Satires of D. J. Juvenalis, Translated Into English Verse, By Mr. Dryden. (1702), 355.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
