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 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.
More Ben Jonson Quotes
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Success hath made me wanton.
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Follow a shadow, it still flies you, Seem to fly, it will pursue: So court a mistress, she denies you; Let her alone, she will court you. Say are not women truly, then, Styled but the shadows of us men?
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Passions are spiritual rebels and raise sedition against the understanding.
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There is no greater hell than to be a prisoner of fear.
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Your highest female grace is silence.
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Love that is ignorant and hatred have almost the same ends.
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He was not of an age, but for all time!
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All concord’s born of contraries.
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Honor’s a good brooch to wear in a man’s hat at all times.
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My thoughts and I were of another world.
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I’ll give anything for a good copy now, be it true or false, so it be news.
BEN JONSON -
Whosoever loves not picture is injurious to truth, and all the wisdom of poetry. Picture is the invention of heaven, the most ancient and most akin to nature. It is itself a silent work, and always one and the same habit.
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If men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the offices and function of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the impossibility of any man’s being a good poet without first being a good man.
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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.
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Spread yourself upon his bosom publicly, whose heart you would eat in private.
BEN JONSON