Ben Jonson Quotes

174 Sourced Quotes

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
Popular men, They must create strange monsters, and then quell them, To make their arts seem something.

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
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
A thankful man owes a courtesy ever; the unthankful but when he needs it.

Ben Jonson
Each petty hand
Can steer a ship becalm'd; but he that will
Govern and carry her to her ends, must know
His tides, his currents, how to shift his sails;
What she will bear in foul, what in fair weathers;
Where her springs are, her leaks, and how to stop 'em;
What strands, what shelves, what rocks do threaten her.

Ben Jonson
Rich apparel has strange virtues; it makes him that hath it without means esteemed for an excellent wit; he that enjoys it with means puts the world in remembrance of his means.

Ben Jonson
JUS:.the lungs of the tobacconist are rotted, the liver spotted, the brain smoked like the backside of the pig-woman's booth, here, and the whole body within, black as her pan you saw e'en now, without.

Ben Jonson
Words borrowed of Antiquity do lend a kind of Majesty to style, and are not without their delight sometimes. 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
Fear to do base, unworthy things is valor; if they be one to us, to suffer them is valor too.

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.

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
Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short; And done, we straight repent us of the sport: Let us not rush blindly on unto it, Like lustful beasts, that only know to do it: For lust will languish, and that heat decay, But thus, thus, keeping endless Holy-.

Ben Jonson
Truth is man's proper good, and the only immortal thing was given to our mortality to use.

Ben Jonson
JUS:.the lungs of the tobacconist are rotted, the liver spotted, the brain smoked like the backside of the pig-woman's booth, here, and the whole body within, black as her pan you saw e'en now, without.

Ben Jonson
Great honours are great burdens, but on whom They are cast with envy, he doth bear two loads.

Ben Jonson
True gladness doth not always speak; joy, bred and born but in the tongue, is weak.

Ben Jonson
Aristotle was the first accurate critic and truest judge nay, the greatest philosopher the world ever had; for he noted the vices of all knowledges, in all creatures, and out of many men's perfections in a science he formed still one Art.

Ben Jonson
Tis no sin love's fruits to steal; But the sweet thefts to reveal; To be taken, to be seen, These have crimes accounted been.

Ben Jonson
Vice Is like a fury to the vicious mind, And turns delight itself to punishment.

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
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
Aye, for 'twere absurd to think That Nature in the Earth bred gold, Perfect in the instant.

Ben Jonson