A lily of a day Is fairer far in May, Although it fall and die that night, It was the plant and flower of light. In small proportions we just beauties see, And in short measures life may perfect be.
BEN JONSONAll discourses but my own afflict me; they seem harsh, impertinent, and irksome
More Ben Jonson Quotes
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The burnt child dreads the fire.
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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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Fortune, thou hadst no deity, if men Had wisdom.
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Let those that merely talk and never think, That live in the wild anarchy of drink
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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.
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The pipe marks the point at which the orangutan ends and man begins.
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How Fortune piles her sports when she begins to practise them!
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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.
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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.
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Freedom doth with degree dispense.
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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.
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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?
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He threatens many that hath injured one.
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Fear to do base, unworthy things is valor; if they be one to us, to suffer them is valor too.
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Many punishments sometimes, and in some cases, as much discredit a prince as many funerals a physician.
BEN JONSON