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 JONSONAnd where she went, the flowers took thickest root, As she had sow’d them with her odorous foot.
More Ben Jonson Quotes
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Nor use too swelling, or ill-sounded words . . . .
BEN JONSON -
He threatens many that hath injured one.
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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 -
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 -
There is no doctrine will do good where nature is wanting.
BEN JONSON -
The way to rise is to obey and please.
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 -
I feel my griefs too, and there scarce is ground Upon my flesh t’inflict another wound. Yet dare I not complain, or wish for death With holy Paul; lest it be thought the breath Of discontent; or that these prayers be For weariness of life, not love of thee.
BEN JONSON -
To speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.
BEN JONSON -
Let argument bear no unmusical sound.
BEN JONSON -
He that would have his virtue published, is not the servant of virtue, but glory.
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 -
For they have the authority of years, and out of their intermission do win to themselves a kind of grace-like newness. But the eldest of the present, and newest of the past Language, is the best.
BEN JONSON -
The burnt child dreads the fire.
BEN JONSON -
Woman, the more careful she is about her face, the more careless about her house.
BEN JONSON