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.
Ben JonsonThat praises are without reason lavished on the dead, and that the honours due only to are paid to antiquity, is a complaint likely to be always continued by those who, being able to add nothing to truth, hope for eminence from the heresies of paradox; or those who, being forced by disappointment upon consolatory expedients, are willing to hope from posterity what the present age refuses, and flatter themselves that the regard which is yet denied by envy will be at last bestowed by time.
Ben JonsonThough I am young, and cannot tell Either what Death or Love is well, Yet I have heard they both bear darts, And both do aim at human hearts. And then again, I have been told Love wounds with heat, as Death with cold; So that I fear they do but bring Extremes to touch, and mean one thing. As in a ruin we it call One thing to be blown up, or fall; Or to our end like way may have By a flash of lightning, or a wave; So Loveโs inflamรจd shaft or brand May kill as soon as Deathโs cold hand; Except Loveโs fires the virtue have To fight the frost out of the grave.
Ben Jonson