Your highest female grace is silence.
BEN JONSONYour highest female grace is silence.
BEN JONSONChance 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 JONSONIt is a note Of upstart greatness to observe and watch For these poor trifles, which the noble mind Neglects and scorns.
BEN JONSONThat I might live alone once with my gold! O, ’tis a sweet companion! kind and true: A man may trust it when his father cheats him, Brother, or friend, or wife. O wondrous pelf! That which makes all men false, is true itself.
BEN JONSONHow Fortune piles her sports when she begins to practise them!
BEN JONSONAs 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 JONSONTrue happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in the worth and choice.
BEN JONSONA new disease? I know not, new or old, but it may well be called poor mortals plague for, like a pestilence, it doth infect the houses of the brain till not a thought, or motion, in the mind, be free from the black poison of suspect.
BEN JONSONSpread yourself upon his bosom publicly, whose heart you would eat in private.
BEN JONSONI glory, more in the cunning purchase of my wealth than in the glad possession.
BEN JONSONGood men but see death, the wicked taste it.
BEN JONSONWoman, the more careful she is about her face, the more careless about her house.
BEN JONSONSweet Swan of Avon! What a sight it were To see thee in our water yet appear.
BEN JONSONWhom the disease of talking still once posses-seth, he can never hold his peace.
BEN JONSONIn the hope to meet Shortly again, and make our absence sweet.
BEN JONSONHell itself must yield to industry.
BEN JONSON