John Dryden Quotes

Sir, I admit your general rule, That every poet is a fool, But you yourself may serve to show it, That every fool is not a poet.

Comedy deflates the sense precisely so that the underlying lubricity and malice may bubble to the surface.

People talk worse about people than they talk good about people, because a lot of people like drama.

Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.

My books have all generated controversy.

In the old days of literature, only the very thick-skinned - or the very brilliant - dared enter the arena of literary criticism. To criticise a person's work required equal measures of erudition and wit, and inferior critics were often the butt of satire and ridicule.

You'd better get your laugh while you're making your point, or you won't be doing it very long.

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.

What I've always said about comedy is if you do it in the right way, you can say anything to anybody because they know where you're coming from. They know it's not malicious.

You can't be satirical and not be offensive to somebody.

I'm accused of, and perhaps rightly so, of not being mean enough. I've been taken to task in many a book review; a good satirist has to, you know, has to kill.

I've done pretty well as a professional fed-up. The tools of my trade so far have been irony, tongue-in-cheek mockery, and supercilious contempt, but these are highly civilized weapons designed for 18th-century French salons.

I disagree with everything John Updike has ever said.

As comics if you aren't rubbing people the wrong way, to me, you suck.

When you dig down and look at the people who are vocal in their criticism of me, it's a small number.

Not very good, I am afraid. But now really, do not you think Udolpho the nicest book in the world?" "The nicest—by which I suppose you mean the neatest. That must depend upon the binding.

Satire recoils whenever charged too high; round your own fame the fatal splinters fly.

VITUPERATION, n. Saite, as understood by dunces and all such as suffer from an impediment in their wit.

I'm opposed to censure, .. Whether or not one will be permitted, it's under discussion. It isn't ruled out, but it's not a dead-bang certainty either.

The animadversions of critics are commonly such as may easily provoke the sedatest writer to some quickness of resentment and asperity of reply.

And it is the way with us that you may express disapproval of the sun or the moon, or anything you like, but God preserve you from touching the Liberals! Heaven forbid!

There must be more malice than love in the hearts of all wits.

Literary criticism now is all pranks and polemics.

The worst thing I can say about democracy is that it has tolerated the right hon. Gentleman for four and a half years.

It really gets me when the critics say I haven't done enough for the economy. I mean, look what I've done for the book publishing industry. You've heard some of the titles. 'Big Lies,' 'The Lies of George W. Bush,' 'The Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.' I'd like to tell you I've read each of these books, but that'd be a lie.