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Men that talk of their own benefits are not believed to talk of them because they have done them, but to have done them because they might talk of them.

Ben Jonson

Nor shall our cups make any guilty men; But at our parting, we will be, as when We innocently met.
BEN JONSON

Cup Drinking Men
Poets are far rarer birds than kings.
BEN JONSON

Bird Kings Poet
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 JONSON

Glasses Men Spring
God wisheth none should wreck on a strange shelf: To him man’s dearer than to himself.
BEN JONSON

Men Strange Wrecks
They, who know no evil, will suspect none.
BEN JONSON

Evil Knows Suspect
All the wise world is little else, in nature, But parasites or subparasites.
BEN JONSON

Little Wise World
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.
BEN JONSON

Ancient Heaven Silent
For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such, As what he loves may never like too much.
BEN JONSON

Love May Sake
[The play] is like to be a very conceited scurvy one, in plain English.
BEN JONSON

Conceited English Plain Play
When a virtuous man is raised, it brings gladness to his friends, grief to his enemies, and glory to his posterity.
BEN JONSON

Enemy Grief Men
Your highest female grace is silence.
BEN JONSON

Female Grace Silence
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 JONSON

Good Man Men Office
Let those that merely talk and never think, That live in the wild anarchy of drink
BEN JONSON

Anarchy Drinking Thinking
The covetous man never has money. The prodigal will have none shortly.
BEN JONSON

Men Money
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?
BEN JONSON

Men Mistress Shadow
He that departs with his own honesty For Vulgar , doth it too dearly buy.
BEN JONSON

Honesty Vulgar

Men that talk of their own benefits are not believed to talk of them because they have done them, but to have done them because they might talk of them.

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Men that talk of their own benefits are not believed to talk of them because they have done them, but to have done them because they might talk of them.

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