Ben Jonson Quotes

174 Sourced Quotes

Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears:
Yet, slower, yet; O faintly, gentle springs:
List to the heavy part the music bears,
Woe weeps out her division, when she sings.
Droop herbs, and flowers,
Fall grief in showers,
Our beauties are not ours;
O, I could still,
Like melting snow upon some craggy hill,
Drop, drop, drop, drop,
Since nature's pride is now, a withered daffodil.

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
In the meantime, to all suits, to all entreaties, to all letters, to all tricks, I will be deaf as an adder, blind as a beetle, lay mine ear to the ground, and lock mine eyes i' my hand against all temptations.

Ben Jonson
Memory, of all the powers of the mind, is the most delicate and frail.

Ben Jonson
In the hope to meet
Shortly again, and make our absence sweet.

Ben Jonson
O!
How vain and vile a passion is this fear!
What base uncomely things it makes men do.

Ben Jonson
He saw in a vision his eldest son (then a child and at London) appear unto him with the mark of a bloody cross on his forehead, as if it had been cutted with a sword, at which amazed he prayed unto God, and in the morning he came to Mr. Camden's chamber to tell him, who persuaded him it was but an apprehension of his fantasy at which he should not be disjected; in the meantime comes there letters from his wife of the death of that boy in the plague. He appeared to him (he said) of a manly shape, and of that growth that he thinks he shall be at the resurrection.

Ben Jonson
Folly often goes beyond her bounds; but Impudence knows none.

Ben Jonson
Nothing is a courtesy unless it be meant us, and that friendly and lovingly. We owe no thanks to rivers that they carry our boats, or winds that they be favoring and fill our sails, or meats that they be nourishing; for these are what they are necessarily. Horses carry us, trees shade us; but they know it not.

Ben Jonson
Love that is ignorant and hatred have almost the same ends.

Ben Jonson
Still may syllables jar with time,
Still may reason war with rhyme,
Resting never!

Ben Jonson
Come my Celia, let us prove,
While we can, the sports of love;
Time will not be ours forever,
He at length our good will sever.
Spend not then his gifts in vain;
Suns that set may rise again,
But if once we lose this light,
'Tis with us perpetual night.
Why should we defer our joys?
Fame and rumour are but toys.

Ben Jonson
The dignity of truth is lost
With much protesting.

Ben Jonson
That Donne himself, for not being understood, would perish.

Ben Jonson
'Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show
To whom all Scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time!
And all the muses still were in their prime,
When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm
Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm!
Nature herself was proud of his designs,
And joy'd to wear the dressing of his lines!
Which were so richly spun, and woven so sit,
As, since she will vouchsafe no other wit.

Ben Jonson
Opinion is a light, vain, crude, and imperfect thing.

Ben Jonson
Rhyme, the rack of finest wits,
That expresseth but by fits,
True conceit,
Spoiling senses of their treasure,
Cozening judgement with a measure,
But false weight.
Wresting words from their true calling;
Propping verse, for fear of falling
To the ground.
Jointing syllables, drowning letters,
Fastening vowels, as with fetters
They were bound!

Ben Jonson
The gods Grow angry with your patience. 'Tis their care, And must be yours, that guilty men escape not: As crimes do grow, justice should rouse itself.

Ben Jonson
I glory
More in the cunning purchase of my wealth
Than in the glad possession.

Ben Jonson
Speech is the only benefit man hath to express his excellency of mind above other creatures.

Ben Jonson
He that departs with his own honesty For Vulgar, doth it too dearly buy.

Ben Jonson
And where she went, the flowers took thickest root, As she had sow'd them with her odorous foot.

Ben Jonson
Mischiefs feed / Like beasts, till they be fat, and then they bleed.

Ben Jonson
A gentleman reading a poem that began with Where is that man that never yet did hear
Of fair Penelope, Ulysses' queen? [Jonson] calling his cook, asked if he had ever heard of her, who answering "No," demonstrate to him Lo, there the man that never yet did hear
Of fair Penelope, Ulysses' queen.

Ben Jonson
Still to be neat, still to be drest,
As you were going to a feast;
Still to be powdered, still perfumed,
Lady, it is to be presumed,
Though art's hid causes are not found,
All is not sweet, all is not sound.

Ben Jonson
Yet must I not give nature all: thy art,
My gentle Shakspeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the poet's matter nature be,
His art doth give the fashion. And that he
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat,
(Such as thine arc) and strike the second heat
Upon the muses anvil; turn the fame,
And himself with it, that he thinks to frame;
Or for the laurel, he may gain a scorn,
For a good poet's made, as well as born.
And such wert thou. Look how the father's face
Lives in his issue, even so the race
Of Shakspeare's mind and manners brightly shines
In his well-turned, and true filed lines:
In each of which he seems to shake a lance,
As brandish'd at the eyes of ignorance.

Ben Jonson
In small proportions we just beauty see,
And in short measures life may perfect be.

Ben Jonson
Blind Fortune still
Bestows her gifts on such as cannot use them.

Ben Jonson
So breaks the sun earth's rugged chains,
Wherein rude winter bound her veins;
So grows both stream and source of price,
That lately fettered were with ice.
So naked trees get crispèd heads,
And coloured coats the roughest meads,
And all get vigour, youth and spright,
That are but looked on by his light.

Ben Jonson
Donne, for not keeping of accent, deserved hanging…Shakespeare wanted art.

Ben Jonson