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 JONSONBooks are faithful repositories, which may be awhile neglected or forgotten, but when they are opened again, will again impart their instruction.
More Ben Jonson Quotes
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Fortune, that favors fools.
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Where dost thou careless lie, Buried in ease and sloth? Knowledge that sleeps, doth die; And this security, It is the common moth, That eats on wits and arts, and oft destroys them both.
BEN JONSON -
How near to good is what is fair!
BEN JONSON -
There is no doctrine will do good where nature is wanting.
BEN JONSON -
It is virtue that gives glory; that will endenizen a man everywhere.
BEN JONSON -
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 -
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 -
In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures, life may perfect be.
BEN JONSON -
Many might go to heaven with half the labour they go to hell, if they would venture their industry the right way.
BEN JONSON -
Ods me I marle what pleasure or felicity they have in taking their roguish tobacco. It is good for nothing but to choke a man, and fill him full of smoke and embers.
BEN JONSON -
He threatens many that hath injured one.
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Man and wife make one fool.
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He that departs with his own honesty For Vulgar , doth it too dearly buy.
BEN JONSON -
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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Affliction teacheth a wicked person sometime to pray; prosperity never.
BEN JONSON