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 JONSONIt is less dishonor to hear imperfectly than to speak imperfectly. The ears are excused; the understanding is not.
More Ben Jonson Quotes
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Nothing is more short-lived than pride.
BEN JONSON -
There is no bounty to be showed to such As have real goodness: Bounty is A spice of virtue; and what virtuous act Can take effect on them that have no power Of equal habitude to apprehend it?
BEN JONSON -
Poets are far rarer birds than kings.
BEN JONSON -
How Fortune piles her sports when she begins to practise them!
BEN JONSON -
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.
BEN JONSON -
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 -
There is no greater hell than to be a prisoner of fear.
BEN JONSON -
No glass renders a man’s form or likeness so true as his speech.
BEN JONSON -
Confound these ancestors… They’ve stolen our best ideas!
BEN JONSON -
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 -
True gladness doth not always speak; joy, bred and born but in the tongue, is weak.
BEN JONSON -
In the hope to meet Shortly again, and make our absence sweet.
BEN JONSON -
He threatens many that hath injured one.
BEN JONSON -
They, who know no evil, will suspect none.
BEN JONSON -
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