Date: 1664

"They are moved (if I may dare to say so) like the rational creatures of the Almighty Poet, who walk at liberty, in their own opinion, because their fetters are invisible; when, indeed, the prison of their will is the more sure for being large; and instead of an absolute power over their actions,...

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1664

"The fancy, memory, and judgment are then extended (like so many limbs) upon the rack; all of them reaching with their utmost stress at nature; a thing so almost infinite and boundless, as can never fully be comprehended, but where the images of all things are always present."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1664

"I can only say in general, that the souls of other men shine out at little crannies; they understand some one thing, perhaps to admiration, while they are darkened on all the other parts: but your Lordship's soul is an entire globe of light, breaking out on every side; and if I have only discove...

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1664

"But that benefit which I consider most in it [rhyme], because I have not seldom found it, is, that it bounds and circumscribes the fancy: for imagination in a poet is a faculty so wild and lawless, that, like an high-ranging spaniel, it must have clogs tied to it, lest it outrun the judgment."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1664

"[B]ut when the difficulty of artful rhyming is interposed, where the poet commonly confines his sense to his couplet, and must contrive that sense into such words, that the rhyme, shall naturally follow them, not they the rhyme; the fancy then gives leisure to the judgment to come in; which seei...

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1666

"The composition of all poems is or ought to be of wit, and wit in the poet, or wit writing (if you will give me leave to use a school distinction), is no other than the faculty of imagination in the writer, which, like a nimble spaniel, beats over and ranges through the field of memory, till it ...

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1666

"O truly royal! who behold the law, / And rule of beings in your Maker's mind; / And thence, like limbecs, rich ideas draw, / To fit the levelled use of humankind."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1666

Elocution is " that art of clothing and adorning that thought so found and varied, in apt, significant, and sounding word."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1667

"But to do this always, and never be able to write a line without it, though it may be admired by some few pedants, will not pass upon those who know that wit is best conveyed to us in the most easy language; and is most to be admired when a great thought comes dressed in words so commonly receiv...

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: Jun 12, 1668; 1671

"'Tis so wild [Wildblood's heart], that the Lady who has it in her keeping, would be glad she were well rid on't: it does so flutter about the Cage. 'Tis a meer Bajazet; and if it be not let out the sooner, will beat out the brains against the Grates."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)