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 JONSONCalumnies are answered best with silence.
More Ben Jonson Quotes
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True happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in the worth and choice.
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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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To the old, long life and treasure; To the young, all health and pleasure.
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The burnt child dreads the fire.
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A good life is a main argument.
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I know no disease of the soul but ignorance, a pernicious evil, the darkener of man’s life, the disturber of his reason, and common confounder of truth.
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Words borrowed of Antiquity do lend a kind of Majesty to style, and are not without their delight sometimes.
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Art hath an enemy call’d ignorance .
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It is an art to have so much judgment as to apparel a lie well, to give it a good dressing.
BEN JONSON -
Sweet Swan of Avon! What a sight it were To see thee in our water yet appear.
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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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Man and wife make one fool.
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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.
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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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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.
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He who is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.
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Hang sorrow, care’ll kill a cat.
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Ods me I marle what pleasure or felicity they have in taking their roguish tobacco. It is good for nothing but to choke a man, and fill him full of smoke and embers.
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A good king is a public servant.
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True melancholy breeds your perfect fine wit.
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Popular men, They must create strange monsters, and then quell them, To make their arts seem something.
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How Fortune piles her sports when she begins to practise them!
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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.
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Thy praise or dispraise is to me alike; One doth not stroke me, nor the other strike.
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Force works on servile natures, not the free.
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To speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.
BEN JONSON