Best 194 quotes of Ben Jonson on MyQuotes

The way to rise is to obey and please.

The world knows only two, that's Rome and I.

They, who know no evil, will suspect none.

Thy praise or dispraise is to me alike; One doth not stroke me, nor the other strike.

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.

Tis not the wholesome sharp mortality, Or modest anger of a satiric spirit, That hurts or wounds the body of a state, But the sinister application Of the malicious, ignorant, and base Interpreter; who will distort and strain The general scope and purpose of an author To his particular and private spleen.

Tis the common disease of all your musicians that they know no mean, to be entreated, either to begin or end.

To men pressed by their wants all change is ever welcome.

To speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.

To struggle when hope is banished! To live when life's salt is gone! To dwell in a dream that's vanished- To endure, and go calmly on!

To the old, long life and treasure; To the young, all health and pleasure.

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

True happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in the worth and choice.

True melancholy breeds your perfect fine wit.

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

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.

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

We are persons of quality, I assure you, and women of fashion, and come to see and to be seen.

Well, as he brews, so shall he drink.

Well, I will scourge those apes, And to these courteous eyes oppose a mirror, As large as is the stage whereon we act; Where they shall see the time's deformity Anatomised in every nerve, and sinew, With constant courage, and contempt of fear.

Were Guilt is, Rage and Courage doth abound.

What excellent fools religion makes of men.

When a virtuous man is raised, it brings gladness to his friends, grief to his enemies, and glory to his posterity.

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.

Where it concerns himself, Who's angry at a slander, makes it true.

Who casts to write a living line, must sweat.

Who falls for love of God, shall rise a star.

Whom hatred frights, let him not dream of sovereignty.

Whom the disease of talking still once posses-seth, he can never hold his peace.

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.

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?

Wine it is the milk of Venus, And the poet's horse accounted: Ply it and you all are mounted.

Woman, the more careful she is about her face, the more careless about her house.

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.

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.

You learn nothing about someone by the way they win the fight, you learn everything about the way they lose and keep coming back.

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy; My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy

He knows not his own strength that hath not met adversity.

He wil sooner lose his best friend, then his least jest.

Indeed there's a woundy luck in names.

Queen and huntress, chaste and fair, Now the sun is laid to sleep, Seated in thy silver chair, State in wonted manner keep: Hesperus entreats thy light, Goddess excellently bright. Earth, let not thy envious shade Dare itself to interpose, Cynthia's shining orb was made Heaven to clear when day did close: Bless us then with wished sight, Goddess excellently bright. Lay thy bow of pearl apart, And thy crystal-shining quiver, Give unto the flying hart Space to breath, how short soever: Thou that mak'st a day of night- Goddess excellently bright.

Riches, the dumb god that giv'st all men tongues, / That canst do nought, and yet mak'st men do all things; / The price of souls; even hell, with thee to boot, / Is made worth heaven!

There was never a great genius without a touch of madness.

Words borrowed of antiquity do lend a kind of majesty to style, and are not without their delight sometimes.