You are not now to think what’s best to do, As in beginnings, but what must be done, Being thus enter’d; and slip no advantage That may secure you. Let them call it mischief; When it is past, and prosper’d , ’twill be virtue.
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
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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 -
One woman reads another’s character Without the tedious trouble of deciphering
BEN JONSON -
It is a note Of upstart greatness to observe and watch For these poor trifles, which the noble mind Neglects and scorns.
BEN JONSON -
Calumnies are answered best with silence.
BEN JONSON -
To speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.
BEN JONSON -
The way to rise is to obey and please.
BEN JONSON -
Chance will not do the work. Chance sends the breeze; But if the pilot slumber at the helm, The very wind that wafts us tow’rds the port May dash us on the shoals. The steersman’s part Is vigilance, or blow it rough or smooth.
BEN JONSON -
Sweet meat must have sour sauce.
BEN JONSON -
I have no urns, no dusty monuments; No broken images of ancestors, Wanting an ear, or nose; no forged tales Of long descents, to boast false honors from.
BEN JONSON -
Whom the disease of talking still once posses-seth, he can never hold his peace.
BEN JONSON -
Honor’s a good brooch to wear in a man’s hat at all times.
BEN JONSON -
A good king is a public servant.
BEN JONSON -
Indeed there’s a woundy luck in names.
BEN JONSON -
Fortune, thou hadst no deity, if men Had wisdom.
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







