“By viewing Nature, Nature's handmaid Art, Makes mighty things from small beginnings grow.”

— John Dryden, Annus Mirabilis (1667), Stanza 155

About John Dryden

1631 – 1700

English poet and playwright, the first Poet Laureate of England.

“Beware the fury of a patient man.”

“Whatever is, is in its causes just.”

“Genius must be born, and never can be taught.”

“Any one thing in the creation is sufficient to demonstrate a Providence to an humble and grateful mind.”

“If music be the food of love, play on.”

“Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue.”

“If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being.”

“The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness.”

“Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.”