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: 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: 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)

Date: Jun 12, 1668; 1671

"But is not your heart of the nature of those Birds that breed in one Countrie, and goe to winter in another?"

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: November 1672, 1673

"Ay, ay, when the love is once come so far, that Spiritual Mind will never leave pulling, and pulling, till it has drawn the beastly body after it."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1678

"But, like a mole in earth, busy and blind, / [the soul] Works all her folly up, and casts it outward / To the world's open view"

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1700, 1717

"Thus all Things are but alter'd, nothing dies; / And here and there th' unbodied Spirit flies, / By Time, or Force, or Sickness dispossess, / And lodges, where it lights, in Man or Beast; / Or hunts without, till ready Limbs it find, / And actuates those according to their kind; / From Tenement ...

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)