Ben Jonson Quotes

Ods me I marle what pleasure or felicity they have in taking their roguish tobacco. It is good for nothing but to choke a man, and fill him full of smoke and embers.

God wisheth none should wreck on a strange shelf: To him man's dearer than to himself.

Your highest female grace is silence.

In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures, life may perfect be.

Force works on servile natures, not the free.

'Tis the common disease of all your musicians that they know no mean, to be entreated, either to begin or end.

Talking is the disease of age.

To speak and to speak well, are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.

The voice so sweet, the words so fair, As some soft chime had stroked the air; And though the sound had parted thence, Still left an echo in the sense.

Ill fortune never crushed that man whom good fortune deceived not.

A valiant man Ought not to undergo, or tempt a danger, But worthily, and by selected ways, He undertakes with reason, not by chance. His valor is the salt t' his other virtues, They're all unseason'd without it.

Drink to me only with thine eyes, And I will pledge with mine; Or leave a kiss but in the cup And I'll not look for wine.

Men that talk of their own benefits are not believed to talk of them because they have done them, but to have done them because they might talk of them.

No simple word
That shall be uttered at our mirthful board,
Shall make us sad next morning; or affright
The liberty that we'll enjoy to-night.

Books are faithful repositories, which may be awhile neglected or forgotten, but when they are opened again, will again impart their instruction.

A woman, the more curious she is about her face, is commonly the more careless about her house.

Reader look, not on his picture but his book.

[The play] is like to be a very conceited scurvy one, in plain English.

He was not of an age, but for all time!

All the wise world is little else, in nature, But parasites or subparasites.

A good man will avoid the spot of any sin. The very aspersion is grievous, which makes him choose his way in his life, as he would in his journey.

Poor worms, they hiss at me, whilst I at home Can be contented to applaud myself, ... with joy To see how plump my bags are and my barns.

Still to be neat, still to be drest,
As you were going to a feast,
Still to be powder'd, all perfum'd.
Lady, it is to be presumed,
Though art's hid causes are not found,
All is not sweet, all is not sound.

It is the highest of earthly honors to be descended from the great and good. They alone cry out against a noble ancestry who have none of their own.

Money never made any man rich, but his mind. He that can order himself to the law of nature, is not only without the sense, but the fear of poverty.

Wine it is the milk of Venus, And the poet's horse accounted: Ply it and you all are mounted.

Words borrowed of antiquity do lend a kind of majesty to style, and are not without their delight sometimes.

For a man to write well, there are required three necessaries: to read the best authors, observe the best speakers, and much exercise of his own style.

The covetous man never has money. The prodigal will have none shortly.

I am now past the craggy paths of study, and come to the flowery plains of honor and reputation.

Riches, the dumb god that giv'st all men tongues, / That canst do nought, and yet mak'st men do all things; / The price of souls; even hell, with thee to boot, / Is made worth heaven!

Where dost thou careless lie, Buried in ease and sloth? Knowledge that sleeps, doth die; And this security, It is the common moth, That eats on wits and arts, and oft destroys them both.

Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short; And done, we straight repent us of the sport: Let us not rush blindly on unto it, Like lustful beasts, that only know to do it: For lust will languish, and that heat decay, But thus, thus, keeping endless Holy-.

How Fortune piles her sports when she begins to practise them!

Who casts to write a living line, must sweat.

Hell itself must yield to industry.

This is the very womb and bed of enormity.

They that know no evil will suspect none.

We are persons of quality, I assure you, and women of fashion, and come to see and to be seen.

It is as great a spite to be praised in the wrong place, and by a wrong person, as can be done to a noble nature.

If you be sick, your own thoughts make you sick.

Good men are the stars, the planets of the ages wherein they live, and illustrate the times

Do not I know if women have a will
They'll do 'gainst all the watches o'the world?

(2. 7. 8-9)

Who will not judge him worthy to be robbed That sets his doors wide open to a thief, And shows the felon where his treasure lies?

True melancholy breeds your perfect fine wit.

That I might live alone once with my gold!
O, 'tis a sweet companion! kind and true:
A man may trust it when his father cheats him,
Brother, or friend, or wife. O wondrous pelf!
That which makes all men false, is true itself.

The poet is the nearest borderer upon the orator.

Popular men, They must create strange monsters, and then quell them, To make their arts seem something.

Well, I will scourge those apes, And to these courteous eyes oppose a mirror, As large as is the stage whereon we act; Where they shall see the time's deformity Anatomised in every nerve, and sinew, With constant courage, and contempt of fear.

Come, my Celia, let us prove, While we can, the sports of love, Time will not be ours for ever, He, at length, our good will sever; Spend not then his gifts in vain: Suns that set may rise again; But if once we lose this light, 'Tis with us perpetual night. Why should we defer our joys? Fame and rumour are but toys.

Who falls for love of God, shall rise a star.

I have no urns, no dusty monuments;
No broken images of ancestors,
Wanting an ear, or nose; no forged tales
Of long descents, to boast false honors from.

For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such, As what he loves may never like too much.

All discourses but my own afflict me; they seem harsh, impertinent, and irksome

As it is a great point of art, when our matter requires it, to enlarge and veer out all sail, so to take it in and contract it is of no less praise when the argument doth ask it.

There is no greater hell than to be a prisoner of fear.

The way to rise is to obey and please.

The pipe marks the point at which the orangutan ends and man begins.

Chance will not do the work. Chance sends the breeze;
But if the pilot slumber at the helm,
The very wind that wafts us tow'rds the port
May dash us on the shoals. The steersman's part
Is vigilance, or blow it rough or smooth.

Honor's a good brooch to wear in a man's hat at all times.

It is virtue that gives glory; that will endenizen a man everywhere.

How near to good is what is fair!

Language most shows a man; speak that I may see thee

A good life is a main argument.

Follow a shadow, it still flies you, Seem to fly, it will pursue: So court a mistress, she denies you; Let her alone, she will court you. Say are not women truly, then, Styled but the shadows of us men?

Tis no sin love's fruits to steal; But the sweet thefts to reveal; To be taken, to be seen, These have crimes accounted been.

How ready is heaven to those that pray!

Truth is man's proper good, and the only immortal thing was given to our mortality to use.

THE greatest of English dramatists except Shakespeare, the first literary dictator and poet-laureate, a writer of verse, prose, satire, and criticism who most potently of all the men of his time affected the subsequent course of English letters: such was Ben Jonson, and as such his strong personality assumes an interest to us almost unparalleled, at least in his age. Ben Jonson came of the stock that was centuries after to give to the world Thomas Carlyle; for Jonson's grandfather was of Annandale, over the Solway, whence he

Calumnies are answered best with silence.

The man that is once hated, both his good and his evil deeds oppress him.

The burnt child dreads the fire.

I am beholden to calumny, that she hath so endeavored to belie me.-It shall make me set a surer guard on myself, and keep a better watch upon my actions.

Fortune, that favors fools.

CORV: Honour! tut, a breath: There's no such thing, in nature: a mere term Invented to awe fools.

A new disease? I know not, new or old, but it may well be called poor mortals plague for, like a pestilence, it doth infect the houses of the brain till not a thought, or motion, in the mind, be free from the black poison of suspect.

He that would have his virtue published, is not the servant of virtue, but glory.

Forbear, you things
That stand upon the pinnacles of state,
To boast your slippery height! when you do fall,
You dash yourselves in pieces, ne'er to rise:
And he that lends you pity, is not wise.

If all you boast of your great art be true; Sure, willing poverty lives most in you.

Let those that merely talk and never think, That live in the wild anarchy of drink

True happiness
Consists not in the multitude of friends,
But in the worth and choice.

The day For whose returns, and many, all these pray; And so do I.

He that departs with his own honesty For Vulgar , doth it too dearly buy.

Peace is never more than one thought away.

Nothing is more short-lived than pride.

Whosoever loves not picture is injurious to truth, and all the wisdom of poetry. Picture is the invention of heaven, the most ancient and most akin to nature. It is itself a silent work, and always one and the same habit.

Tell troth and shame the devil.

Nothing is a courtesy unless it be meant us, and that friendly and lovingly. We owe no thanks to rivers that they carry our boats, or winds that they be favoring and fill our sails, or meats that they be nourishing; for these are what they are necessarily. Horses carry us, trees shade us; but they know it not.

He threatens many that hath injured one.

Cares that have entered once in the breast, will have whole possession of the rest.

Where it concerns himself, Who's angry at a slander, makes it true.

Greatness of name, in the father, ofttimes helps not forth, but overwhelms the son: They stand too near one another. The shadow kills the growth.

Success produces confidence; confidence relaxes industry, and negligence ruins the reputation which accuracy had raised.

I would rather have a plain down-right wisdom than a foolish and affected eloquence.

I now think, Love is rather deaf, than blind, For else it could not be, That she, Whom I adore so much, should so slight me, And cast my love behind.

Court a mistress, she denies you; let her alone, she will court you.

Riches are in fortune A greater good than wisdom is in nature.

Vice Is like a fury to the vicious mind, And turns delight itself to punishment.

For he that once is good, is ever great.

Heaven prepares good men with crosses; but no ill can happen to a good man.