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 JONSONLanguage most shows a man; speak that I may see thee; it springs out of the most retired and inmost parts of us, and is the image of the parent of it, the mind. No glass renders a man’s form or likeness so true as his speech.
More Ben Jonson Quotes
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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 do honor the very flea of his dog.
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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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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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In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures, life may perfect be.
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Words borrowed of Antiquity do lend a kind of Majesty to style, and are not without their delight sometimes.
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All the wise world is little else, in nature, But parasites or subparasites.
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How ready is heaven to those that pray!
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The dignity of truth is lost with much protesting.
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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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Court a mistress, she denies you; let her alone, she will court you.
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Drink to me only with thine eyes, And I will pledge with mine; Or leave a kiss but in the cup And I’ll not look for wine.
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Opinion is a light, vain, crude, and imperfect thing.
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And where she went, the flowers took thickest root, As she had sow’d them with her odorous foot.
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A good man will avoid the spot of any sin. The very aspersion is grievous, which makes him choose his way in his life, as he would in his journey.
BEN JONSON