Prevent your day at morning.
BEN JONSONWhosoever loves not picture is injurious to truth, and all the wisdom of poetry. Picture is the invention of heaven, the most ancient and most akin to nature. It is itself a silent work, and always one and the same habit.
More Ben Jonson Quotes
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Where it concerns himself, Who’s angry at a slander, makes it true.
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We are persons of quality, I assure you, and women of fashion, and come to see and to be seen.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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O, for an engine, to keep back all clocks, or make the sun forget his motion!
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Language most shows a man; speak that I may see thee; it springs out of the most retired and inmost parts of us, and is the image of the parent of it, the mind. No glass renders a man’s form or likeness so true as his speech.
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If all you boast of your great art be true; Sure, willing poverty lives most in you.
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It is less dishonor to hear imperfectly than to speak imperfectly. The ears are excused; the understanding is not.
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Our whole life is like a play.
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For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such, As what he loves may never like too much.
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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.
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Words borrowed of Antiquity do lend a kind of Majesty to style, and are not without their delight sometimes.
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[The play] is like to be a very conceited scurvy one, in plain English.
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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.
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Weigh the meaning and look not at the words.
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If you succeed not, cast not away the quills yet, nor scratch the wainscot, beat not the poor desk, but bring all to the forge and file again; turn it new.
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Opinion is a light, vain, crude, and imperfect thing.
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Wine it is the milk of Venus, And the poet’s horse accounted: Ply it and you all are mounted.
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To the old, long life and treasure; To the young, all health and pleasure.
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In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures, life may perfect be.
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He was not of an age, but for all time!
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Popular men, They must create strange monsters, and then quell them, To make their arts seem something.
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And where she went, the flowers took thickest root, As she had sow’d them with her odorous foot.
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He that would have his virtue published, is not the servant of virtue, but glory.
BEN JONSON