Success produces confidence; confidence relaxes industry, and negligence ruins the reputation which accuracy had raised.
BEN JONSONIf 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.
More Ben Jonson Quotes
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Silence in woman is like speech in man.
BEN JONSON -
No simple word That shall be uttered at our mirthful board, Shall make us sad next morning; or affright The liberty that we’ll enjoy to-night.
BEN JONSON -
The covetous man never has money. The prodigal will have none shortly.
BEN JONSON -
How Fortune piles her sports when she begins to practise them!
BEN JONSON -
Soul of the age! The applause! delight! The wonder of our stage!
BEN JONSON -
I have discovered that a famed familiarity in great ones is a note of certain usurpation on the less; for great and popular men feign themselves to be servants to others to make those slaves to them.
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 -
A new disease? I know not, new or old, but it may well be called poor mortals plague for, like a pestilence, it doth infect the houses of the brain till not a thought, or motion, in the mind, be free from the black poison of suspect.
BEN JONSON -
Nor shall our cups make any guilty men; But at our parting, we will be, as when We innocently met.
BEN JONSON -
O, for an engine, to keep back all clocks, or make the sun forget his motion!
BEN JONSON -
Cut Men’s throats with whisperings.
BEN JONSON -
What excellent fools religion makes of men.
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 -
Whom hatred frights, let him not dream of sovereignty.
BEN JONSON -
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