Tis the common disease of all your musicians that they know no mean, to be entreated, either to begin or end.
BEN JONSONYou are not now to think what’s best to do, As in beginnings, but what must be done, Being thus enter’d; and slip no advantage That may secure you. Let them call it mischief; When it is past, and prosper’d , ’twill be virtue.
More Ben Jonson Quotes
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Words borrowed of Antiquity do lend a kind of Majesty to style, and are not without their delight sometimes.
BEN JONSON -
A lily of a day Is fairer far in May, Although it fall and die that night, It was the plant and flower of light. In small proportions we just beauties see, And in short measures life may perfect be.
BEN JONSON -
Follow a shadow, it still flies you, Seem to fly, it will pursue: So court a mistress, she denies you; Let her alone, she will court you. Say are not women truly, then, Styled but the shadows of us men?
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 -
Poor worms, they hiss at me, whilst I at home Can be contented to applaud myself, . . . with joy To see how plump my bags are and my barns.
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 -
All concord’s born of contraries.
BEN JONSON -
Tell troth and shame the devil.
BEN JONSON -
It is less dishonor to hear imperfectly than to speak imperfectly. The ears are excused; the understanding is not.
BEN JONSON -
I see compassion may become a justice, though it be a weakness, I confess, and nearer a vice than a virtue.
BEN JONSON -
Great honours are great burdens, but on whom They are cast with envy, he doth bear two loads.
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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.
BEN JONSON -
Fortune, thou hadst no deity, if men Had wisdom.
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Poets are far rarer birds than kings.
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Calumnies are answered best with silence.
BEN JONSON