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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

Popular men, They must create strange monsters, and then quell them, To make their arts seem something.
BEN JONSON

Art Men Monsters
Good men but see death, the wicked taste it.
BEN JONSON

Death Good Man Men
He threatens many that hath injured one.
BEN JONSON

Crime Injured Threaten
All discourses but my own afflict me; they seem harsh, impertinent, and irksome
BEN JONSON

Discourse Harsh Speech
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

Men Popularity Slave
He was not of an age, but for all time!
BEN JONSON

Age Time
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

Doors Judgment Lying Treasure
What excellent fools religion makes of men.
BEN JONSON

Men Religion Religious
When a virtuous man is raised, it brings gladness to his friends, grief to his enemies, and glory to his posterity.
BEN JONSON

Enemy Grief Men
Opinion is a light, vain, crude, and imperfect thing.
BEN JONSON

Imperfect Light Opinion Things
Sweet meat must have sour sauce.
BEN JONSON

Meat Swans Sweet
The pipe marks the point at which the orangutan ends and man begins.
BEN JONSON

Men Smoking
The day For whose returns, and many, all these pray; And so do I.
BEN JONSON

Birthday Praying Return
Men that talk of their own benefits are not believed to talk of them because they have done them, but to have done them because they might talk of them.
BEN JONSON

Benefits Done Men
Ambition makes more trusty slaves than need
BEN JONSON

Ambition Needs Slave
You learn nothing about someone by the way they win the fight, you learn everything about the way they lose and keep coming back.
BEN JONSON

Art Fighting Winning
For 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.
BEN JONSON

Exercise Men Writing
I know no disease of the soul but ignorance, a pernicious evil, the darkener of man’s life, the disturber of his reason, and common confounder of truth.
BEN JONSON

Ignorance Men Science
Words borrowed of Antiquity do lend a kind of Majesty to style, and are not without their delight sometimes.
BEN JONSON

Past Winning Years
To men pressed by their wants all change is ever welcome.
BEN JONSON

Change Men Want Welcome
God wisheth none should wreck on a strange shelf: To him man’s dearer than to himself.
BEN JONSON

Men Strange Wrecks
Let those that merely talk and never think, That live in the wild anarchy of drink
BEN JONSON

Anarchy Drinking Thinking
Ready writing makes not good writing, but good writing brings on ready writing.
BEN JONSON

Good Ready Writing
How near to good is what is fair!
BEN JONSON

Fairs Good Goodness Near
In the hope to meet Shortly again, and make our absence sweet.
BEN JONSON

Absence Hope Love Miss Sweet
All the wise world is little else, in nature, But parasites or subparasites.
BEN JONSON

Little Wise World
And where she went, the flowers took thickest root, As she had sow’d them with her odorous foot.
BEN JONSON

Feet Flower Roots

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.

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Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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