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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.

Ben Jonson

[The play] is like to be a very conceited scurvy one, in plain English.
BEN JONSON

Conceited English Plain Play
Where it concerns himself, Who’s angry at a slander, makes it true.
BEN JONSON

Angry Concern Slander
To men pressed by their wants all change is ever welcome.
BEN JONSON

Change Men Want Welcome
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

Blow Slumber Wind
To struggle when hope is banished! To live when life’s salt is gone! To dwell in a dream that’s vanished- To endure, and go calmly on!
BEN JONSON

Dream Life Struggle Vanish
Indeed there’s a woundy luck in names.
BEN JONSON

Indeed Luck Names Woundy
Wine it is the milk of Venus, And the poet’s horse accounted: Ply it and you all are mounted.
BEN JONSON

Horse Plies Wine
Where dost thou careless lie, Buried in ease and sloth? Knowledge that sleeps, doth die; And this security, It is the common moth, That eats on wits and arts, and oft destroys them both.
BEN JONSON

Art Common Lying Security Sleep
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

Mean Remembrance Rich World
Out of clothes out of countenance, out of countenance out of wit.
BEN JONSON

Clothes Countenance Wit
Woman, the more careful she is about her face, the more careless about her house.
BEN JONSON

Faces Home House
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.
BEN JONSON

Crafts Scratches Succeed
Get money, still get money, boy, no matter by what means.
BEN JONSON

Boys Mean Money
Ambition makes more trusty slaves than need
BEN JONSON

Ambition Needs Slave
Tell troth and shame the devil.
BEN JONSON

Devil Shame Truth
He that departs with his own honesty For Vulgar , doth it too dearly buy.
BEN JONSON

Honesty Vulgar

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Ben Jonson Quotes