Force works on servile natures, not the free.
BEN JONSONHow Fortune piles her sports when she begins to practise them!
More Ben Jonson Quotes
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[The play] is like to be a very conceited scurvy one, in plain English.
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It is as great a spite to be praised in the wrong place, and by a wrong person, as can be done to a noble nature.
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My thoughts and I were of another world.
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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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I have been at my book; and am now past the craggy paths of study, and come to the flowery plains of honour and reputation
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Cut Men’s throats with whisperings.
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There is no doctrine will do good where nature is wanting.
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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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How Fortune piles her sports when she begins to practise them!
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All discourses but my own afflict me; they seem harsh, impertinent, and irksome
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Who will not judge him worthy to be robbed That sets his doors wide open to a thief, And shows the felon where his treasure lies?
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I know no disease of the soul but ignorance, a pernicious evil, the darkener of man’s life, the disturber of his reason, and common confounder of truth.
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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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Woman, the more careful she is about her face, the more careless about her house.
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Still may syllables jar with time, Still may reason war with rhyme, Resting never!
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I have discovered that a famed familiarity in great ones is a note of certain usurpation on the less; for great and popular men feign themselves to be servants to others to make those slaves to them.
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Whom the disease of talking still once posses-seth, he can never hold his peace.
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Where it concerns himself, Who’s angry at a slander, makes it true.
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How ready is heaven to those that pray!
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Well, as he brews, so shall he drink.
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Confound these ancestors… They’ve stolen our best ideas!
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To men pressed by their wants all change is ever welcome.
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It strikes! one, two, Three, four, five, six. Enough, enough, dear watch, Thy pulse hath beat enough. Now sleep and rest; Would thou could’st make the time to do so too; I’ll wind thee up no more.
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Blueness doth express trueness.
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Love that is ignorant and hatred have almost the same ends.
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Tell troth and shame the devil.
BEN JONSON