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 JONSONTrue melancholy breeds your perfect fine wit.
More Ben Jonson Quotes
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Many punishments sometimes, and in some cases, as much discredit a prince as many funerals a physician.
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The man that is once hated, both his good and his evil deeds oppress him.
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Whosoever loves not picture is injurious to truth, and all the wisdom of poetry. Picture is the invention of heaven, the most ancient and most akin to nature. It is itself a silent work, and always one and the same habit.
BEN JONSON -
Minds that are great and free, should not on fortune pause: ‘Tis crown enough to virtue still, her own applause.
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Drink today, and drown all sorrow; You shall perhaps not do it tomorrow; Best, while you have it, use your breath; There is no drinking after death.
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 -
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 -
And where she went, the flowers took thickest root, As she had sow’d them with her odorous foot.
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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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Love that is ignorant and hatred have almost the same ends.
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The soul of man is infinite in what it covets.
BEN JONSON -
For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such, As what he loves may never like too much.
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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.
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.
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Let argument bear no unmusical sound.
BEN JONSON