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It is the highest of earthly honors to be descended from the great and good. They alone cry out against a noble ancestry who have none of their own.

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.
BEN JONSON

Art Causes Drest Near Sweet
The covetous man never has money. The prodigal will have none shortly.
BEN JONSON

Men Money
The pipe marks the point at which the orangutan ends and man begins.
BEN JONSON

Men Smoking
Poets are far rarer birds than kings.
BEN JONSON

Bird Kings Poet
For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such, As what he loves may never like too much.
BEN JONSON

Love May Sake
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

Broken Honor Long
True happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in the worth and choice.
BEN JONSON

Friendship Happiness Positive
I’ll give anything for a good copy now, be it true or false, so it be news.
BEN JONSON

False Giving News True
Language 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.
BEN JONSON

Glasses Men Spring
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

Art Ask Matter Praise Style
How ready is heaven to those that pray!
BEN JONSON

Heaven Prayer Praying
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

Act Apes Courage Eye Mirror Time
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

Crafts Scratches Succeed
Cut Men’s throats with whisperings.
BEN JONSON

Cutting Men Whispering
There is no greater hell than to be a prisoner of fear.
BEN JONSON

Fear Hell No Prisoner
Let those that merely talk and never think, That live in the wild anarchy of drink
BEN JONSON

Anarchy Drinking Thinking

It is the highest of earthly honors to be descended from the great and good. They alone cry out against a noble ancestry who have none of their own.

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It is the highest of earthly honors to be descended from the great and good. They alone cry out against a noble ancestry who have none of their own.

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