It is less dishonor to hear imperfectly than to speak imperfectly. The ears are excused; the understanding is not.
BEN JONSONThe pipe marks the point at which the orangutan ends and man begins.
More Ben Jonson Quotes
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Cares that have entered once in the breast, will have whole possession of the rest.
BEN JONSON -
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.
BEN JONSON -
I do honor the very flea of his dog.
BEN JONSON -
True gladness doth not always speak; joy, bred and born but in the tongue, is weak.
BEN JONSON -
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.
BEN JONSON -
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat.
BEN JONSON -
Opinion is a light, vain, crude, and imperfect thing.
BEN JONSON -
The covetous man never has money. The prodigal will have none shortly.
BEN JONSON -
The day For whose returns, and many, all these pray; And so do I.
BEN JONSON -
There is no doctrine will do good where nature is wanting.
BEN JONSON -
Nor shall our cups make any guilty men; But at our parting, we will be, as when We innocently met.
BEN JONSON -
Memory, of all the powers of the mind, is the most delicate and frail.
BEN JONSON -
He that is respectless in his courses oft sells his reputation at cheap market.
BEN JONSON -
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.
BEN JONSON -
Well, as he brews, so shall he drink.
BEN JONSON