Ben Jonson Quotes (101 Quotes)


    Neither do thou lust after that tawny weed tobacco.

    For a good poet's made as well as born.


    Success produces confidence; confidence relaxes industry, and negligence ruins the reputation which accuracy had raised.

    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-


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

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

    Underneath this stone doth lie As much beauty as could die.

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

    That praises are without reason lavished on the dead, and that the honours due only to are paid to antiquity, is a complaint likely to be always continued by those who, being able to add nothing to truth, hope for eminence from the heresies of paradox or those who, being forced by disappointment upon consolatory expedients, are willing to hope from posterity what the present age refuses, and flatter themselves that the regard which is yet denied by envy will be at last bestowed by time.

    Ambition makes more trusty slaves than need.

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

    God wisheth none should wreck on a strange shelf To him man's dearer than to himself.

    In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures, life may perfect be.

    Force works on servile natures, not the free.

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


    O, for an engine, to keep back all clocks, or make the sun forget his motion!

    Let them call it mischief: When it is past and prospered t'will be virtue.

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

    There is no greater hell than to be a prisoner of fear.

    I now think Love is rather deaf than blind,
    For else it could not be
    That she,
    Whom I adore so much, should so slight me
    And cast my love behind.

    Follow a shadow, it still flies you,Seem to fly it, it will pursue.So court a mistress, she denies youLet her alone, she will court you.Say, are not women truly, thenStyled but the shadows of us men


    Get money, still get money, boy, no matter by what means.

    Give me a look, give me a face, That makes simplicity a grace Robes loosely flowing, hair as free Such sweet neglect more taketh me Than all the adulteries of art They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.


    They that know no evil will suspect none.


    I am grieved that it should be said he is my brother, and take these courses. Well, as he brews, so shall he drink, for George again. Yet he shall hear on't, and tightly, too, an' I live, i'faith.

    Ill fortune never crushed that man whom good fortune deceived not.


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

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

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

    Ramp up my genius, be not retrograde But boldly nominate a spade a spade.

    If you be sick, your own thoughts will make you sick

    And though thou hadst small Latin, and less Greek.

    To struggle when hope is banished To live when lifes salt is gone To dwell in a dream thats vanished To endure, and go calmly on.

    I love you, I love you, I love you,
    with the armchair and the book of death
    down the melancholy hallway,
    in the iris's dark garret,
    in our bed that was once the moon's bed,
    and in that dance the turtle dreamed of.

    A 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.

    Greatness of name in the father oft-times overwhelms the son they stand too near one another. The shadow kills the growth so much, that we see the grandchild come more and oftener to be heir of the first.

    A woman, the more curious she is about her face, is commonly the more careless about her house.

    He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.

    Reader, look Not on his picture, but his book.

    They say Princes learn no art truly, but the art of horsemanship. The reason is, the brave beast is no flatterer. He will throw a prince as soon as his groom.


    Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.

    He that was only taught by himself had a fool for his master.

    Honor's a good brooch to wear in a man's hat at all times.


    More Ben Jonson Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Love - Man - Age - Art - Time - God - Fool - Truth - Mind - Enemy - Vice & Virtue - Books - Medicine & Medical - Death & Dying - Reputation - Fate & Destiny - Language - Faces - Honor - View All Ben Jonson Quotations

    Related Authors


    William Blake - Robert Frost - John Keats - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - e. e. cummings - Aeschylus - Sylvia Plath - John Betjeman - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Edgar Guest


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