Mischiefs feed / Like beasts, till they be fat, and then they bleed.
BEN JONSONCares that have entered once in the breast, will have whole possession of the rest.
More Ben Jonson Quotes
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Court a mistress, she denies you; let her alone, she will court you.
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 -
Soul of the age! The applause! delight! The wonder of our stage!
BEN JONSON -
Prevent your day at morning.
BEN JONSON -
Spread yourself upon his bosom publicly, whose heart you would eat in private.
BEN JONSON -
Fear to do base, unworthy things is valor; if they be one to us, to suffer them is valor too.
BEN JONSON -
Our whole life is like a play.
BEN JONSON -
Whom the disease of talking still once posses-seth, he can never hold his peace.
BEN JONSON -
If all you boast of your great art be true; Sure, willing poverty lives most in you.
BEN JONSON -
Blueness doth express trueness.
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 -
Opinion is a light, vain, crude, and imperfect thing.
BEN JONSON -
Very few men are wise by their own council, or learned by their own teaching. For he that was only taught by himself, had a fool for a master.
BEN JONSON -
Nor for my peace will I go far, As wanderers do, that still do roam, But make my strengths, such as they are, Here in my bosom, and at home.
BEN JONSON -
Force works on servile natures, not the free.
BEN JONSON -
Woman, the more careful she is about her face, the more careless about her house.
BEN JONSON -
The pipe marks the point at which the orangutan ends and man begins.
BEN JONSON -
Where dost thou careless lie, Buried in ease and sloth? Knowledge that sleeps, doth die; And this security, It is the common moth, That eats on wits and arts, and oft destroys them both.
BEN JONSON -
A good dog deserves a good bone.
BEN JONSON -
Good men but see death, the wicked taste it.
BEN JONSON -
There is no doctrine will do good where nature is wanting.
BEN JONSON -
A good man will avoid the spot of any sin. The very aspersion is grievous, which makes him choose his way in his life, as he would in his journey.
BEN JONSON -
God wisheth none should wreck on a strange shelf: To him man’s dearer than to himself.
BEN JONSON -
Ready writing makes not good writing, but good writing brings on ready writing.
BEN JONSON -
The two chief things that give a man reputation in counsel, are the opinion of his honesty, and the opinion of his wisdom; the authority of those two will persuade.
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That 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 JONSON