Ben Jonson Quotes

Queen and huntress, chaste and fair Now the sun is laid to sleep, Seated in thy silver chair, State in wonted manner keep: Hesperus entreats thy light Goddess, excellently bright.

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.

Passions are spiritual rebels and raise sedition against the understanding.

If men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the offices and function of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the impossibility of any man's being a good poet without first being a good man.

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

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.

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.

A good dog deserves a good bone.

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

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

Language most shows a man, speak that I may see thee.

Neither do thou lust after that tawny weed tobacco.

Nothing is more short-lived than pride.

The burnt child dreads the fire.

That 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.

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.

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.

It is an art to have so much judgment as to apparel a lie well, to give it a good dressing.

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.

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.

Words borrowed of Antiquity do lend a kind of Majesty to style, and are not without their delight sometimes. For they have the authority of years, and out of their intermission do win to themselves a kind of grace-like newness. But the eldest of the present, and newest of the past Language, is the best.

Your highest female grace is silence.

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

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

No glass renders a man's form or likeness so true as his speech.

When a virtuous man is raised, it brings gladness to his friends, grief to his enemies, and glory to his posterity.

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.

Many punishments sometimes, and in some cases, as much discredit a prince as many funerals a physician.

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

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.

He who is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.

A thankful man owes a courtesy ever; the unthankful but when he needs it.

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.

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.

I'll give anything for a good copy now, be it true or false, so it be news.

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

To men pressed by their wants all change is ever welcome.

That old bald cheater, Time.

Soul of the age! The applause! delight! The wonder of our stage!

... the best pilots have need of mariners, besides sails, anchor and other tackle.

The way to rise is to obey and please.

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.

If you be sick, your own thoughts make you sick

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

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

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.

Fortune, thou hadst no deity, if men Had wisdom.

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