True gladness doth not always speak; joy, bred and born but in the tongue, is weak.
BEN JONSONIn small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures, life may perfect be.
More Ben Jonson Quotes
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All discourses but my own afflict me; they seem harsh, impertinent, and irksome
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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.
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Ambition makes more trusty slaves than need
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In the hope to meet Shortly again, and make our absence sweet.
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Passions are spiritual rebels and raise sedition against the understanding.
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Poets are far rarer birds than kings.
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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.
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Court a mistress, she denies you; let her alone, she will court you.
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Popular men, They must create strange monsters, and then quell them, To make their arts seem something.
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Whom hatred frights, let him not dream of sovereignty.
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Mischiefs feed / Like beasts, till they be fat, and then they bleed.
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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.
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I’ll give anything for a good copy now, be it true or false, so it be news.
BEN JONSON -
Calumnies are answered best with silence.
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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.
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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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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.
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The pipe marks the point at which the orangutan ends and man begins.
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Vice Is like a fury to the vicious mind, And turns delight itself to punishment.
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The soul of man is infinite in what it covets.
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How near to good is what is fair!
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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.
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Sweet meat must have sour sauce.
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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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He threatens many that hath injured one.
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Great honours are great burdens, but on whom They are cast with envy, he doth bear two loads.
BEN JONSON