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 JONSONIt strikes! one, two, Three, four, five, six. Enough, enough, dear watch, Thy pulse hath beat enough. Now sleep and rest; Would thou could’st make the time to do so too; I’ll wind thee up no more.
More Ben Jonson Quotes
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The world knows only two, that’s Rome and I.
BEN JONSON -
The man that is once hated, both his good and his evil deeds oppress him.
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He that is respectless in his courses oft sells his reputation at cheap market.
BEN JONSON -
It is a note Of upstart greatness to observe and watch For these poor trifles, which the noble mind Neglects and scorns.
BEN JONSON -
God wisheth none should wreck on a strange shelf: To him man’s dearer than to himself.
BEN JONSON -
Good men are the stars, the planets of the ages wherein they live, and illustrate the times.
BEN JONSON -
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 -
They, who know no evil, will suspect none.
BEN JONSON -
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.
BEN JONSON -
Poor worms, they hiss at me, whilst I at home Can be contented to applaud myself, . . . with joy To see how plump my bags are and my barns.
BEN JONSON -
Men that talk of their own benefits are not believed to talk of them because they have done them, but to have done them because they might talk of them.
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 -
How Fortune piles her sports when she begins to practise them!
BEN JONSON -
I see compassion may become a justice, though it be a weakness, I confess, and nearer a vice than a virtue.
BEN JONSON -
Opinion is a light, vain, crude, and imperfect thing.
BEN JONSON