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Chance will not do the work. Chance sends the breeze; But if the pilot slumber at the helm, The very wind that wafts us tow’rds the port May dash us on the shoals. The steersman’s part Is vigilance, or blow it rough or smooth.

Ben Jonson

If all you boast of your great art be true; Sure, willing poverty lives most in you.
BEN JONSON

Art Being Poverty True
For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such, As what he loves may never like too much.
BEN JONSON

Love May Sake
Memory, of all the powers of the mind, is the most delicate and frail.
BEN JONSON

Frail Memories Mind
There is no doctrine will do good where nature is wanting.
BEN JONSON

Creeds Doctrine Good Waiting
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.
BEN JONSON

Art Ask Matter Praise Style
Folly often goes beyond her bounds, but impudence knows none.
BEN JONSON

Folly Impudence Rudeness
He that departs with his own honesty For Vulgar , doth it too dearly buy.
BEN JONSON

Honesty Vulgar
It holds for good polity ever, to have that outwardly in vilest estimation, which inwardly is most dear to us.
BEN JONSON

Dear Estimation Hypocrisy
Fortune, thou hadst no deity, if men Had wisdom.
BEN JONSON

Fortune Men
The burnt child dreads the fire.
BEN JONSON

Children Dread Fire
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

Benefits Done Men
A good king is a public servant.
BEN JONSON

Good King Kings Servant
Tis the common disease of all your musicians that they know no mean, to be entreated, either to begin or end.
BEN JONSON

Disease Mean Music
Words borrowed of Antiquity do lend a kind of Majesty to style, and are not without their delight sometimes.
BEN JONSON

Past Winning Years
Reader look, not on his picture but his book.
BEN JONSON

Book Looks Reader
Nor shall our cups make any guilty men; But at our parting, we will be, as when We innocently met.
BEN JONSON

Cup Drinking Men

Chance will not do the work. Chance sends the breeze; But if the pilot slumber at the helm, The very wind that wafts us tow’rds the port May dash us on the shoals. The steersman’s part Is vigilance, or blow it rough or smooth.

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Chance will not do the work. Chance sends the breeze; But if the pilot slumber at the helm, The very wind that wafts us tow’rds the port May dash us on the shoals. The steersman’s part Is vigilance, or blow it rough or smooth.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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