Top 100 Ben Jonson Quotes
#1. To the old, long life and treasure; To the young, all health and pleasure.
Ben Jonson
#2. They say Princes learn no art truly, but the art of horsemanship. The reason is, the brave beast is no flatterer. He will throw a prince as soon as his groom.
Ben Jonson
#3. Aristotle was the first accurate critic and truest judge nay, the greatest philosopher the world ever had; for he noted the vices of all knowledges, in all creatures, and out of many men's perfections in a science he formed still one Art.
Ben Jonson
#4. Love that is ignorant and hatred have almost the same ends.
Ben Jonson
#5. The pipe marks the point at which the orangutan ends and man begins.
Ben Jonson
#6. For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such, As what he loves may never like too much.
Ben Jonson
#8. One woman reads another's character Without the tedious trouble of deciphering
Ben Jonson
#9. Court a mistress, she denies you; let her alone, she will court you.
Ben Jonson
#10. Nor shall our cups make any guilty men;
But at our parting, we will be, as when
We innocently met.
Ben Jonson
#11. He threatens many that hath injured one.
Ben Jonson
#12. 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.
Ben Jonson
#13. It strikes! one, two, Three, four, five, six. Enough, enough, dear watch, Thy pulse hath beat enough. Now sleep and rest; Would thou could'st make the time to do so too; I'll wind thee up no more.
Ben Jonson
#14. 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.
Ben Jonson
#15. There is no greater hell than to be a prisoner of fear.
Ben Jonson
#17. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.
Ben Jonson
#18. What excellent fools religion makes of men.
Ben Jonson
#19. Art hath an enemy call'd ignorance .
Ben Jonson
#20. Language most shows a man; speak that I may see thee
Ben Jonson
#21. It is virtue that gives glory; that will endenizen a man everywhere.
Ben Jonson
#22. True happiness
Consists not in the multitude of friends,
But in the worth and choice.
Ben Jonson
#23. To speak and to speak well, are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.
Ben Jonson
#24. It is a note
Of upstart greatness to observe and watch
For these poor trifles, which the noble mind
Neglects and scorns.
Ben Jonson
#25. Great honours are great burdens, but on whom They are cast with envy, he doth bear two loads.
Ben Jonson
#26. Out of clothes out of countenance, out of countenance out of wit.
Ben Jonson
#27. I perceive affection makes a fool Of any man too much the father.
Ben Jonson
#28. The covetous man never has money. The prodigal will have none shortly.
Ben Jonson
#29. I see compassion may become a justice, though it be a weakness, I confess, and nearer a vice than a virtue.
Ben Jonson
#30. He wil sooner lose his best friend, then his least jest.
Ben Jonson
#31. 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.
Ben Jonson
#32. I feel my griefs too, and there scarce is ground
Upon my flesh t'inflict another wound.
Yet dare I not complain, or wish for death
With holy Paul; lest it be thought the breath
Of discontent; or that these prayers be
For weariness of life, not love of thee.
Ben Jonson
#33. CORV: Honour! tut, a breath: There's no such thing, in nature: a mere term Invented to awe fools.
Ben Jonson
#34. Silence in woman is like speech in man.
Ben Jonson
#35. To men pressed by their wants all change is ever welcome.
Ben Jonson
#36. Whom hatred frights, let him not dream of sovereignty.
Ben Jonson
#37. The world knows only two, that's Rome and I.
Ben Jonson
#38. Vice Is like a fury to the vicious mind, And turns delight itself to punishment.
Ben Jonson
#39. The two chief things that give a man reputation in counsel, are the opinion of his honesty, and the opinion of his wisdom; the authority of those two will persuade.
Ben Jonson
#40. Indeed there's a woundy luck in names.
Ben Jonson
#41. AMBITION MAKES MORE TRUSTY SLAVES THAN NEED
Ben Jonson
#42. Whom the disease of talking still once posses-seth, he can never hold his peace.
Ben Jonson
#43. A good poet's made as well as born.
Ben Jonson
#44. Of all wild beasts preserve me from a tyrant; and of all tame a flatterer.
Ben Jonson
#45. Sweet Swan of Avon! What a sight it were
To see thee in our water yet appear.
Ben Jonson
#46. Language most shews a man: Speak, that I may see thee.
Ben Jonson
#47. In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures, life may perfect be.
Ben Jonson
#48. Your highest female grace is silence.
Ben Jonson
#49. Confound these ancestors ... They've stolen our best ideas!
Ben Jonson
#50. Memory, of all the powers of the mind, is the most delicate and frail.
Ben Jonson
#51. Rich apparel has strange virtues; it makes him that hath it without means esteemed for an excellent wit; he that enjoys it with means puts the world in remembrance of his means.
Ben Jonson
#52. He that departs with his own honesty For Vulgar , doth it too dearly buy.
Ben Jonson
#53. All the wise world is little else, in nature, But parasites or subparasites.
Ben Jonson
#54. He that would have his virtue published, is not the servant of virtue, but glory.
Ben Jonson
#55. 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.
Ben Jonson
#57. Wine it is the milk of Venus, And the poet's horse accounted: Ply it and you all are mounted.
Ben Jonson
#58. 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!
Ben Jonson
#59. They that know no evil will suspect none.
Ben Jonson
#60. Give me a look, give me a face, That makes simplicity a grace Robes loosely flowing, hair as free Such sweet neglect more taketh me Than all the adulteries of art: They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.
Ben Jonson
#61. Reader look, not on his picture but his book.
Ben Jonson
#62. All discourses but my own afflict me; they seem harsh, impertinent, and irksome
Ben Jonson
#63. 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.
Ben Jonson
#64. Ambition, like a torrent, ne'er looks back; And is a swelling, and the last affection A high mind can put off; being both a rebel Unto the soul and reason, and enforceth All laws, all conscience, treads upon religion, and offereth violence to nature's self.
Ben Jonson
#65. Good men but see death, the wicked taste it.
Ben Jonson
#66. Get money, still get money, boy, no matter by what means.
Ben Jonson
#67. Honor's a good brooch to wear in a man's hat at all times.
Ben Jonson
#68. I am now past the craggy paths of study, and come to the flowery plains of honor and reputation.
Ben Jonson
#69. Where it concerns himself, Who's angry at a slander, makes it true.
Ben Jonson
#70. It holds for good polity ever, to have that outwardly in vilest estimation, which inwardly is most dear to us.
Ben Jonson
#71. I know no disease of the soul but ignorance, a pernicious evil, the darkener of man's life, the disturber of his reason, and common confounder of truth.
Ben Jonson
#72. How Fortune piles her sports when she begins to practise them!
Ben Jonson
#73. Passions are spiritual rebels and raise sedition against the understanding.
Ben Jonson
#74. The way to rise is to obey and please.
Ben Jonson
#75. Cut Men's throats with whisperings.
Ben Jonson
#76. A woman, the more curious she is about her face, is commonly the more careless about her house.
Ben Jonson
#77. There was never a great genius without a touch of madness.
Ben Jonson
#78. 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.
Ben Jonson
#79. The dignity of truth is lost with much protesting.
Ben Jonson
#80. How ready is heaven to those that pray!
Ben Jonson
#81. Truth is man's proper good, and the only immortal thing was given to our mortality to use.
Ben Jonson
#82. Nor use too swelling, or ill-sounded words ...
Ben Jonson
#83. Poets are far rarer birds than kings.
Ben Jonson
#84. He was not of an age, but for all time!
Ben Jonson
#85. Custom is the most certain mistress of language, as the public stamp makes the current money.
Ben Jonson
#86. 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-.
Ben Jonson
#87. For this I find, where jealousy is fed,
Horns in the mind are worse than on the head.
Ben Jonson
#88. He that is respectless in his courses oft sells his reputation at cheap market.
Ben Jonson
#89. Art hath an enemy called Ignorance.
Ben Jonson
#90. It is an art to have so much judgment as to apparel a lie well, to give it a good dressing.
Ben Jonson
#91. A prince without letters is a Pilot without eyes. All his government is groping.
Ben Jonson
#92. 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.
Ben Jonson
#93. Heaven prepares good men with crosses; but no ill can happen to a good man.
Ben Jonson
#94. O! How vain and vile a passion is this fear! What base uncomely things it makes men do.
Ben Jonson
#95. Peace is never more than one thought away.
Ben Jonson
#96. The soul of man is infinite in what it covets.
Ben Jonson
#98. 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.
Ben Jonson
#99. A good man should and must Sit rather down with loss than rise unjust.
Ben Jonson
#100. For he that once is good, is ever great.
Ben Jonson
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