Poets are far rarer birds than kings.
BEN JONSONThe 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.
More Ben Jonson Quotes
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Nor use too swelling, or ill-sounded words . . . .
BEN JONSON -
I have no urns, no dusty monuments; No broken images of ancestors, Wanting an ear, or nose; no forged tales Of long descents, to boast false honors from.
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 -
Spread yourself upon his bosom publicly, whose heart you would eat in private.
BEN JONSON -
Vice Is like a fury to the vicious mind, And turns delight itself to punishment.
BEN JONSON -
My thoughts and I were of another world.
BEN JONSON -
Indeed there’s a woundy luck in names.
BEN JONSON -
Hell itself must yield to industry.
BEN JONSON -
Calumnies are answered best with silence.
BEN JONSON -
I remember, the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never plotted out a line. My answer hath been, would he had blotted a thousand.
BEN JONSON -
It strikes! one, two, Three, four, five, six. Enough, enough, dear watch, Thy pulse hath beat enough. Now sleep and rest; Would thou could’st make the time to do so too; I’ll wind thee up no more.
BEN JONSON -
You learn nothing about someone by the way they win the fight, you learn everything about the way they lose and keep coming back.
BEN JONSON -
Money never made any man rich, but his mind. He that can order himself to the law of nature, is not only without the sense, but the fear of poverty.
BEN JONSON -
It holds for good polity ever, to have that outwardly in vilest estimation, which inwardly is most dear to us.
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