You are not now to think what’s best to do, As in beginnings, but what must be done, Being thus enter’d; and slip no advantage That may secure you. Let them call it mischief; When it is past, and prosper’d , ’twill be virtue.
BEN JONSONFreedom doth with degree dispense.
More Ben Jonson Quotes
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Ambition makes more trusty slaves than need
BEN JONSON -
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 -
He threatens many that hath injured one.
BEN JONSON -
Follow a shadow, it still flies you, Seem to fly, it will pursue: So court a mistress, she denies you; Let her alone, she will court you. Say are not women truly, then, Styled but the shadows of us men?
BEN JONSON -
A good poet’s made as well as born.
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 -
I feel my griefs too, and there scarce is ground Upon my flesh t’inflict another wound. Yet dare I not complain, or wish for death With holy Paul; lest it be thought the breath Of discontent; or that these prayers be For weariness of life, not love of thee.
BEN JONSON -
There is no doctrine will do good where nature is wanting.
BEN JONSON -
All the wise world is little else, in nature, But parasites or subparasites.
BEN JONSON -
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 -
Your highest female grace is silence.
BEN JONSON -
Passions are spiritual rebels and raise sedition against the understanding.
BEN JONSON -
Our whole life is like a play.
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 -
No man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.
BEN JONSON