Nor for my peace will I go far, As wanderers do, that still do roam, But make my strengths, such as they are, Here in my bosom, and at home.
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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Mischiefs feed / Like beasts, till they be fat, and then they bleed.
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He that would have his virtue published, is not the servant of virtue, but glory.
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If you be sick, your own thoughts make you sick
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Love that is ignorant and hatred have almost the same ends.
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Greatness of name, in the father, ofttimes helps not forth, but overwhelms the son: They stand too near one another. The shadow kills the growth.
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In the hope to meet Shortly again, and make our absence sweet.
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The Devil is an Ass , I do acknowledge it.
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 good dog deserves a good bone.
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Sweet meat must have sour sauce.
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It is as great a spite to be praised in the wrong place, and by a wrong person, as can be done to a noble nature.
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Where it concerns himself, Who’s angry at a slander, makes it true.
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Nor shall our cups make any guilty men; But at our parting, we will be, as when We innocently met.
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We are persons of quality, I assure you, and women of fashion, and come to see and to be seen.
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Poets are far rarer birds than kings.
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He who is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.
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Out of clothes out of countenance, out of countenance out of wit.
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The day For whose returns, and many, all these pray; And so do I.
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There is no greater hell than to be a prisoner of fear.
BEN JONSON -
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.
BEN JONSON -
A valiant man Ought not to undergo, or tempt a danger, But worthily, and by selected ways, He undertakes with reason, not by chance. His valor is the salt t’ his other virtues, They’re all unseason’d without it.
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For they have the authority of years, and out of their intermission do win to themselves a kind of grace-like newness. But the eldest of the present, and newest of the past Language, is the best.
BEN JONSON -
Whom the disease of talking still once posses-seth, he can never hold his peace.
BEN JONSON -
True gladness doth not always speak; joy, bred and born but in the tongue, is weak.
BEN JONSON -
Language most shows a man; speak that I may see thee; it springs out of the most retired and inmost parts of us, and is the image of the parent of it, the mind. No glass renders a man’s form or likeness so true as his speech.
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Poor worms, they hiss at me, whilst I at home Can be contented to applaud myself, . . . with joy To see how plump my bags are and my barns.
BEN JONSON