One woman reads another’s character Without the tedious trouble of deciphering
BEN JONSONFor a man to write well, there are required three necessaries: to read the best authors, observe the best speakers, and much exercise of his own style.
More Ben Jonson Quotes
-
-
I see compassion may become a justice, though it be a weakness, I confess, and nearer a vice than a virtue.
BEN JONSON -
[The play] is like to be a very conceited scurvy one, in plain English.
BEN JONSON -
Of all wild beasts preserve me from a tyrant; and of all tame a flatterer.
BEN JONSON -
Follow a shadow, it still flies you, Seem to fly, it will pursue: So court a mistress, she denies you; Let her alone, she will court you. Say are not women truly, then, Styled but the shadows of us men?
BEN JONSON -
If you be sick, your own thoughts make you sick
BEN JONSON -
If all you boast of your great art be true; Sure, willing poverty lives most in you.
BEN JONSON -
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.
BEN JONSON -
Heaven prepares good men with crosses; but no ill can happen to a good man.
BEN JONSON -
Indeed there’s a woundy luck in names.
BEN JONSON -
Affliction teacheth a wicked person sometime to pray; prosperity never.
BEN JONSON -
Fortune, that favors fools.
BEN JONSON -
What excellent fools religion makes of men.
BEN JONSON -
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 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 -
Success hath made me wanton.
BEN JONSON







