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 JONSONPrinces that would their people should do well Must at themselves begin, as at the head; For men, by their example, pattern out Their limitations, and regard of laws: A virtuous court a world to virtue draws.
More Ben Jonson Quotes
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Ods me I marle what pleasure or felicity they have in taking their roguish tobacco. It is good for nothing but to choke a man, and fill him full of smoke and embers.
BEN JONSON -
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 -
I’ll give anything for a good copy now, be it true or false, so it be news.
BEN JONSON -
No simple word That shall be uttered at our mirthful board, Shall make us sad next morning; or affright The liberty that we’ll enjoy to-night.
BEN JONSON -
To men pressed by their wants all change is ever welcome.
BEN JONSON -
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 -
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 -
The poet is the nearest borderer upon the orator.
BEN JONSON -
And where she went, the flowers took thickest root, As she had sow’d them with her odorous foot.
BEN JONSON -
There is no doctrine will do good where nature is wanting.
BEN JONSON -
We are persons of quality, I assure you, and women of fashion, and come to see and to be seen.
BEN JONSON -
Were Guilt is, Rage and Courage doth abound.
BEN JONSON -
Nor use too swelling, or ill-sounded words . . . .
BEN JONSON -
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 -
Honor’s a good brooch to wear in a man’s hat at all times.
BEN JONSON