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The dignity of truth is lost with much protesting.

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

Ambition Conscience Law Rebel Self Soul
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

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

Conceited English Plain Play
Whom hatred frights, let him not dream of sovereignty.
BEN JONSON

Dream Hate Hatred
I see compassion may become a justice, though it be a weakness, I confess, and nearer a vice than a virtue.
BEN JONSON

Compassion Justice Weakness
True melancholy breeds your perfect fine wit.
BEN JONSON

Fine Melancholy Perfect Wit
For a man to write well, there are required three necessaries: to read the best authors, observe the best speakers, and much exercise of his own style.
BEN JONSON

Exercise Men Writing
There is no bounty to be showed to such As have real goodness: Bounty is A spice of virtue; and what virtuous act Can take effect on them that have no power Of equal habitude to apprehend it?
BEN JONSON

Real Spices Virtue
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
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

Intermission Newest Present Themselves
Money never made any man rich, but his mind. He that can order himself to the law of nature, is not only without the sense, but the fear of poverty.
BEN JONSON

Law Men Mind Order Sense
No glass renders a man’s form or likeness so true as his speech.
BEN JONSON

Glasses Men Speech
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

Easily May Men Taught Wise
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
I do honor the very flea of his dog.
BEN JONSON

Dog Hero Honor
Good men but see death, the wicked taste it.
BEN JONSON

Death Good Man Men
Freedom doth with degree dispense.
BEN JONSON

Degree Dispense Freedom
Soul of the age! The applause! delight! The wonder of our stage!
BEN JONSON

Age Delight Soul Wonder
I remember, the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never plotted out a line. My answer hath been, would he had blotted a thousand.
BEN JONSON

Answer Lines Mention Penend Player Writing
Fortune, that favors fools.
BEN JONSON

Favors Fool Fortune
Our whole life is like a play.
BEN JONSON

Life Play Whole
Truth is man’s proper good, and the only immortal thing was given to our mortality to use.
BEN JONSON

Men Truth Use
Honor’s a good brooch to wear in a man’s hat at all times.
BEN JONSON

Hate Honor Men Time
He was not of an age, but for all time!
BEN JONSON

Age Time
The world knows only two, that’s Rome and I.
BEN JONSON

Conceited Fools Rome Two
Were Guilt is, Rage and Courage doth abound.
BEN JONSON

Guilt Guilty Shame
The pipe marks the point at which the orangutan ends and man begins.
BEN JONSON

Men Smoking

The dignity of truth is lost with much protesting.

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The dignity of truth is lost with much protesting.

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