Language most shows a man, speak that I may see thee.
BEN JONSONHow Fortune piles her sports when she begins to practise them!
More Ben Jonson Quotes
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Folly often goes beyond her bounds, but impudence knows none.
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Ambition makes more trusty slaves than need
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Let those that merely talk and never think, That live in the wild anarchy of drink
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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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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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Fortune, thou hadst no deity, if men Had wisdom.
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Man and wife make one fool.
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[The play] is like to be a very conceited scurvy one, in plain English.
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Rich apparel has strange virtues; it makes him that hath it without means esteemed for an excellent wit; he that enjoys it with means puts the world in remembrance of his means.
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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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Drink today, and drown all sorrow; You shall perhaps not do it tomorrow; Best, while you have it, use your breath; There is no drinking after death.
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It is virtue that gives glory; that will endenizen a man everywhere.
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I see compassion may become a justice, though it be a weakness, I confess, and nearer a vice than a virtue.
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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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Get money, still get money, boy, no matter by what means.
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I have no urns, no dusty monuments; No broken images of ancestors, Wanting an ear, or nose; no forged tales Of long descents, to boast false honors from.
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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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A good king is a public servant.
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Well, I will scourge those apes, And to these courteous eyes oppose a mirror, As large as is the stage whereon we act; Where they shall see the time’s deformity Anatomised in every nerve, and sinew, With constant courage, and contempt of fear.
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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.
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Still to be neat, still to be drest, As you were going to a feast, Still to be powder’d, all perfum’d. Lady, it is to be presumed, Though art’s hid causes are not found, All is not sweet, all is not sound.
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I feel my griefs too, and there scarce is ground Upon my flesh t’inflict another wound. Yet dare I not complain, or wish for death With holy Paul; lest it be thought the breath Of discontent; or that these prayers be For weariness of life, not love of thee.
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Give me a look, give me a face, That makes simplicity a grace Robes loosely flowing, hair as free Such sweet neglect more taketh me Than all the adulteries of art: They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.
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When a virtuous man is raised, it brings gladness to his friends, grief to his enemies, and glory to his posterity.
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True gladness doth not always speak; joy, bred and born but in the tongue, is weak.
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Blueness doth express trueness.
BEN JONSON