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 JONSONA 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.
More Ben Jonson Quotes
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I now think, Love is rather deaf, than blind, For else it could not be, That she, Whom I adore so much, should so slight me, And cast my love behind.
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Get money, still get money, boy, no matter by what means.
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I am beholden to calumny, that she hath so endeavored to belie me.-It shall make me set a surer guard on myself, and keep a better watch upon my actions.
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Very few men are wise by their own council, or learned by their own teaching. For he that was only taught by himself, had a fool for a master.
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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.
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Out of clothes out of countenance, out of countenance out of wit.
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Great honours are great burdens, but on whom They are cast with envy, he doth bear two loads.
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Blueness doth express trueness.
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My thoughts and I were of another world.
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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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Where it concerns himself, Who’s angry at a slander, makes it true.
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A good king is a public servant.
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True happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in the worth and choice.
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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.
BEN JONSON -
Whom hatred frights, let him not dream of sovereignty.
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Fortune, thou hadst no deity, if men Had wisdom.
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The dignity of truth is lost with much protesting.
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True melancholy breeds your perfect fine wit.
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To the old, long life and treasure; To the young, all health and pleasure.
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The two chief things that give a man reputation in counsel, are the opinion of his honesty, and the opinion of his wisdom; the authority of those two will persuade.
BEN JONSON -
All discourses but my own afflict me; they seem harsh, impertinent, and irksome
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Ambition, like a torrent, ne’er looks back; And is a swelling, and the last affection A high mind can put off; being both a rebel Unto the soul and reason, and enforceth All laws, all conscience, treads upon religion, and offereth violence to nature’s self.
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Indeed there’s a woundy luck in names.
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Success hath made me wanton.
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How ready is heaven to those that pray!
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O! How vain and vile a passion is this fear! What base uncomely things it makes men do.
BEN JONSON