The soul of man is infinite in what it covets.
BEN JONSONLet those that merely talk and never think, That live in the wild anarchy of drink
More Ben Jonson Quotes
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Art hath an enemy call’d ignorance .
BEN JONSON -
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 -
O, for an engine, to keep back all clocks, or make the sun forget his motion!
BEN JONSON -
Force works on servile natures, not the free.
BEN JONSON -
It is less dishonor to hear imperfectly than to speak imperfectly. The ears are excused; the understanding is not.
BEN JONSON -
Wine it is the milk of Venus, And the poet’s horse accounted: Ply it and you all are mounted.
BEN JONSON -
They, who know no evil, will suspect none.
BEN JONSON -
I would rather have a plain down-right wisdom than a foolish and affected eloquence.
BEN JONSON -
To speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.
BEN JONSON -
No glass renders a man’s form or likeness so true as his speech.
BEN JONSON -
Spread yourself upon his bosom publicly, whose heart you would eat in private.
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 -
I remember, the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never plotted out a line. My answer hath been, would he had blotted a thousand.
BEN JONSON -
Nothing is more short-lived than pride.
BEN JONSON -
Ambition, like a torrent, ne’er looks back; And is a swelling, and the last affection A high mind can put off; being both a rebel Unto the soul and reason, and enforceth All laws, all conscience, treads upon religion, and offereth violence to nature’s self.
BEN JONSON







