Court a mistress, she denies you; let her alone, she will court you.
BEN JONSONOf all wild beasts preserve me from a tyrant; and of all tame a flatterer.
More Ben Jonson Quotes
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Fear to do base, unworthy things is valor; if they be one to us, to suffer them is valor too.
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Confound these ancestors… They’ve stolen our best ideas!
BEN JONSON -
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.
BEN JONSON -
Tell troth and shame the devil.
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And where she went, the flowers took thickest root, As she had sow’d them with her odorous foot.
BEN JONSON -
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?
BEN JONSON -
Blueness doth express trueness.
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Honor’s a good brooch to wear in a man’s hat at all times.
BEN JONSON -
No simple word That shall be uttered at our mirthful board, Shall make us sad next morning; or affright The liberty that we’ll enjoy to-night.
BEN JONSON -
If you succeed not, cast not away the quills yet, nor scratch the wainscot, beat not the poor desk, but bring all to the forge and file again; turn it new.
BEN JONSON -
Silence in woman is like speech in man.
BEN JONSON -
He threatens many that hath injured one.
BEN JONSON -
A good dog deserves a good bone.
BEN JONSON -
Reader look, not on his picture but his book.
BEN JONSON -
To speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.
BEN JONSON -
Folly often goes beyond her bounds, but impudence knows none.
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.
BEN JONSON -
Very few men are wise by their own council, or learned by their own teaching. For he that was only taught by himself, had a fool for a master.
BEN JONSON -
Tis the common disease of all your musicians that they know no mean, to be entreated, either to begin or end.
BEN JONSON -
A thankful man owes a courtesy ever; the unthankful but when he needs it.
BEN JONSON -
I do honor the very flea of his dog.
BEN JONSON -
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.
BEN JONSON -
To men pressed by their wants all change is ever welcome.
BEN JONSON -
For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such, As what he loves may never like too much.
BEN JONSON -
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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Ambition, like a torrent, never looks back.
BEN JONSON