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.
BEN JONSONWhere it concerns himself, Who’s angry at a slander, makes it true.
More Ben Jonson Quotes
-
-
Ambition, like a torrent, never looks back.
BEN JONSON -
The burnt child dreads the fire.
BEN JONSON -
Our whole life is like a play.
BEN JONSON -
A prince without letters is a Pilot without eyes. All his government is groping.
BEN JONSON -
True gladness doth not always speak; joy, bred and born but in the tongue, is weak.
BEN JONSON -
Sweet Swan of Avon! What a sight it were To see thee in our water yet appear.
BEN JONSON -
Prevent your day at morning.
BEN JONSON -
A good life is a main argument.
BEN JONSON -
Mischiefs feed / Like beasts, till they be fat, and then they bleed.
BEN JONSON -
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 JONSON -
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 -
Whom hatred frights, let him not dream of sovereignty.
BEN JONSON -
It is the highest of earthly honors to be descended from the great and good. They alone cry out against a noble ancestry who have none of their own.
BEN JONSON -
Fear to do base, unworthy things is valor; if they be one to us, to suffer them is valor too.
BEN JONSON -
The poet is the nearest borderer upon the orator.
BEN JONSON -
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.
BEN JONSON -
Affliction teacheth a wicked person sometime to pray; prosperity never.
BEN JONSON -
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 -
Ambition makes more trusty slaves than need
BEN JONSON -
Soul of the age! The applause! delight! The wonder of our stage!
BEN JONSON -
Honor’s a good brooch to wear in a man’s hat at all times.
BEN JONSON -
Guilt’s a terrible thing.
BEN JONSON -
The world knows only two, that’s Rome and I.
BEN JONSON -
Princes that would their people should do well Must at themselves begin, as at the head; For men, by their example, pattern out Their limitations, and regard of laws: A virtuous court a world to virtue draws.
BEN JONSON -
It is virtue that gives glory; that will endenizen a man everywhere.
BEN JONSON -
I now think, Love is rather deaf, than blind, For else it could not be, That she, Whom I adore so much, should so slight me, And cast my love behind.
BEN JONSON