The traducian theory of the origin of the soul

 

 If by traduction came thy mind,

Our wonder is the less to find

A soul so charming from a stock so good;

Thy father was transfus'd into thy blood.

 

-- John Dryden 

Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither

Yet all the little that I got, I spent;

And still return'd as empty as I went.

-- John Dryden

Who needs The New York Times?

 Provok'd by those incorrigible fools,

I left declaiming in pedantick schools.

-- John Dryden

The comments to this are appalling:

The Shock of Faith: It’s Nothing Like I Thought It Would Be

Shall we be made a story and a byword through the world?

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 O baseness to support a tyrant throne,

And crush your freeborn brethren of the world!

Nay, to become a part of usurpation,

T' espouse the tyrant's person and her crimes.

-- John Dryden

John Dryden describes justice according to The Democrat Party

 Cheaply you sin, and punish crimes with ease,

Not as th' offended, but the offenders please.

-- John Dryden

Religion begins with experience of the holy

 The holy man, amaz'd at what he saw,

Made haste to sanctify the bliss by law.

-- John Dryden

So many would be great

 So much the thirst of honour fires the blood;

So many would be great, so few be good;

For who would virtue for herself regard,

Or wed without the portion of reward?

-- John Dryden

Same empire of confident illiterates, different day

 Th' illiterate writer, emperick like applies

To minds diseas'd unsafe chance remedies.

The learn'd in schools, where knowledge first began,

Studies with care th' anatomy of man;

Sees virtue, vice, and passions in their cause,

And fame from science, not from fortune draws.

-- John Dryden

For never was more need

  

 

 

 

  And while it lasts, let buffoonery succeed,

To make us laugh; for never was more need.

-- John Dryden

Discontented beings are we

  Of night impatient we demand the day, 

The day arrives, and for the night we pray.

-- Richard Blackmore

When thoughts weigh heavy

 His pensive cheek upon his hand reclin'd,

And anxious thoughts revolving in his mind.

-- John Dryden

The inner light torments us

 Not sharp revenge, nor hell itself, can find

A fiercer torment than a guilty mind,

Which day and night doth dreadfully accuse,

Condemns the wretch, and still the charge renews.

-- John Dryden

Self-annulling charity

Poor refugees, at first they purchase here;

And soon as denizen'd, they domineer.

 

-- John Dryden

Democracy in action

 As when in tumults rise th' ignoble crowd,

Mad are their motions, and their tongues are loud.

-- John Dryden

John Dryden was no Athenian

 A multitude of scribblers, who daily pester the world with their insufferable stuff, should be discouraged from writing anymore.

-- John Dryden

For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.

-- Acts 17:21

Only a degenerate people gives women political power

 Degenerous passion, and for man too base,

It seats its empire in the female race;

There rages, and, to make its blow secure,

Puts flatt'ry on, until the aim be sure.

-- John Dryden

Man, five foot six, fights off great Russian bear for 18 days and counting

Thus, by degrees, he rose to Jove's imperial seat:

Thus difficulties prove a soul legitimately great.

-- John Dryden

The endless itch

 

 

 The charms of poetry our souls bewitch;

The curse of writing is an endless itch.

-- John Dryden

The well worn way

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nature, that rude, and in her first essay,

Stood boggling at the roughness of the way;

Us'd to the road, unknowing to return,

Goes boldly on, and loves the path when worn.

-- John Dryden, 13th Satire of Juvenal

For the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.

 

-- Matthew 7:13

The write stuff

Every man cannot distinguish betwixt pedantry and poetry;

every man therefore is not fit to innovate.

-- John Dryden