Language most shows a man; speak that I may see thee; it springs out of the most retired and inmost parts of us, and is the image of the parent of it, the mind. No glass renders a man’s form or likeness so true as his speech.
BEN JONSONO, for an engine, to keep back all clocks, or make the sun forget his motion!
More Ben Jonson Quotes
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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.
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God wisheth none should wreck on a strange shelf: To him man’s dearer than to himself.
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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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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.
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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.
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A prince without letters is a Pilot without eyes. All his government is groping.
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Poets are far rarer birds than kings.
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Tell troth and shame the devil.
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No simple word That shall be uttered at our mirthful board, Shall make us sad next morning; or affright The liberty that we’ll enjoy to-night.
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Were Guilt is, Rage and Courage doth abound.
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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.
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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.
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A good poet’s made as well as born.
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Truth is man’s proper good, and the only immortal thing was given to our mortality to use.
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Nothing is more short-lived than pride.
BEN JONSON






