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In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures, life may perfect be.

Ben Jonson

True gladness doth not always speak; joy, bred and born but in the tongue, is weak.
BEN JONSON

Joy Speak Tongue
All discourses but my own afflict me; they seem harsh, impertinent, and irksome
BEN JONSON

Discourse Harsh Speech
A valiant man Ought not to undergo, or tempt a danger, But worthily, and by selected ways, He undertakes with reason, not by chance. His valor is the salt t’ his other virtues, They’re all unseason’d without it.
BEN JONSON

Men Salt Way
Ambition makes more trusty slaves than need
BEN JONSON

Ambition Needs Slave
In the hope to meet Shortly again, and make our absence sweet.
BEN JONSON

Absence Hope Love Miss Sweet
Passions are spiritual rebels and raise sedition against the understanding.
BEN JONSON

Passion Spiritual Understanding
Poets are far rarer birds than kings.
BEN JONSON

Bird Kings Poet
I am beholden to calumny, that she hath so endeavored to belie me.-It shall make me set a surer guard on myself, and keep a better watch upon my actions.
BEN JONSON

Action Calumny Watches
Court a mistress, she denies you; let her alone, she will court you.
BEN JONSON

Court Deny Mistress
Popular men, They must create strange monsters, and then quell them, To make their arts seem something.
BEN JONSON

Art Men Monsters
Whom hatred frights, let him not dream of sovereignty.
BEN JONSON

Dream Hate Hatred
Mischiefs feed / Like beasts, till they be fat, and then they bleed.
BEN JONSON

Beast Fats Mischief
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

Blind Love Slight Thinking
I’ll give anything for a good copy now, be it true or false, so it be news.
BEN JONSON

False Giving News True
Calumnies are answered best with silence.
BEN JONSON

Advice Silence
Greatness of name, in the father, ofttimes helps not forth, but overwhelms the son: They stand too near one another. The shadow kills the growth.
BEN JONSON

Father Greatness Son
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.
BEN JONSON

Easily May Men Taught Wise
As it is a great point of art, when our matter requires it, to enlarge and veer out all sail, so to take it in and contract it is of no less praise when the argument doth ask it.
BEN JONSON

Art Ask Matter Praise Style
The pipe marks the point at which the orangutan ends and man begins.
BEN JONSON

Men Smoking
Vice Is like a fury to the vicious mind, And turns delight itself to punishment.
BEN JONSON

Mind Punishment Vices
The soul of man is infinite in what it covets.
BEN JONSON

Infinite Men Soul
How near to good is what is fair!
BEN JONSON

Fairs Good Goodness Near
Chance will not do the work. Chance sends the breeze; But if the pilot slumber at the helm, The very wind that wafts us tow’rds the port May dash us on the shoals. The steersman’s part Is vigilance, or blow it rough or smooth.
BEN JONSON

Blow Slumber Wind
Sweet meat must have sour sauce.
BEN JONSON

Meat Swans Sweet
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

Intermission Newest Present Themselves
He threatens many that hath injured one.
BEN JONSON

Crime Injured Threaten
Great honours are great burdens, but on whom They are cast with envy, he doth bear two loads.
BEN JONSON

Envy Honor Two

In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures, life may perfect be.

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In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures, life may perfect be.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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