180 Quotes by Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson, an influential figure in English literature during the Renaissance period, made significant contributions as a poet, playwright, and literary critic. Known for his sharp wit, intellectual depth, and mastery of language, Jonson's works explored themes of morality, human nature, and social criticism. His plays, including "Volpone" and "The Alchemist," showcased his satirical genius and keen observation of society.
As a poet, Jonson's lyrical compositions and elegies demonstrated his versatility and skill in capturing the complexities of human emotions. Beyond his creative achievements, Jonson's critical essays and literary theories helped shape the literary landscape of his time, influencing the works of his contemporaries and future generations of writers. Jonson's legacy as a poet and playwright remains relevant and influential today, with his works continuing to be studied and celebrated for their poetic brilliance and insightful social commentary.
Ben Jonson Quotes
To speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.
Honor's a good brooch to wear in a man's hat at all times.
The poet is the nearest borderer upon the orator.
The voice so sweet, the words so fair, As some soft chime had stroked the air; And though the sound had parted thence, Still left an echo in the sense.
True happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in the worth and choice.
A good man will avoid the spot of any sin. The very aspersion is grievous, which makes him choose his way in his life, as he would in his journey.
There is no greater hell than to be a prisoner of fear. (Meaning)
Drink to me only with thine eyes, And I will pledge with mine; Or leave a kiss but in the cup And I'll not look for wine.
Success produces confidence; confidence relaxes industry, and negligence ruins the reputation which accuracy had raised.
Memory, of all the powers of the mind, is the most delicate and frail.
He who is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.
Ambition, like a torrent, never looks back.
The pipe marks the point at which the orangutan ends and man begins.
Calumnies are answered best with silence.
Blueness doth express trueness.
The dignity of truth is lost with much protesting.
Great honours are great burdens, but on whom They are cast with envy, he doth bear two loads.
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.
Chance will not do the work. Chance sends the breeze; But if the pilot slumber at the helm, The very wind that wafts us tow'rds the port. May dash us on the shoals. The steersman's part. Is vigilance, or blow it rough or smooth.
You learn nothing about someone by the way they win the fight, you learn everything about the way they lose and keep coming back.
Get money, still get money, boy, no matter by what means.
Woman, the more careful she is about her face, the more careless about her house.
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.
Of all wild beasts preserve me from a tyrant; and of all tame a flatterer.
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.
A prince without letters is a Pilot without eyes. All his government is groping.
No man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.
Thy praise or dispraise is to me alike; One doth not stroke me, nor the other strike.
Confound these ancestors... They've stolen our best ideas!
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.
Nothing is more short-lived than pride.
It is less dishonor to hear imperfectly than to speak imperfectly. The ears are excused; the understanding is not.
We are persons of quality, I assure you, and women of fashion, and come to see and to be seen.
The Devil is an Ass , I do acknowledge it.
Drink today, and drown all sorrow; You shall perhaps not do it tomorrow; Best, while you have it, use your breath; There is no drinking after death.
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!
My thoughts and I were of another world.
Follow a shadow, it still flies you, Seem to fly, it will pursue: So court a mistress, she denies you; Let her alone, she will court you. Say are not women truly, then, Styled but the shadows of us men?
Court a mistress, she denies you; let her alone, she will court you.
It is virtue that gives glory; that will endenizen a man everywhere.
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?
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.
They, who know no evil, will suspect none.
Good men are the stars, the planets of the ages wherein they live, and illustrate the times.
Money never made any man rich, but his mind. He that can order himself to the law of nature, is not only without the sense, but the fear of poverty.
I remember, the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never plotted out a line. My answer hath been, would he had blotted a thousand.
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.
Let argument bear no unmusical sound.
Folly often goes beyond her bounds, but impudence knows none.
If you be sick, your own thoughts make you sick
To the old, long life and treasure; To the young, all health and pleasure.
What excellent fools religion makes of men.
Fortune, that favors fools.
The way to rise is to obey and please.
Language most shows a man, speak that I may see thee.
Let those that merely talk and never think, That live in the wild anarchy of drink
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.
Many might go to heaven with half the labour they go to hell, if they would venture their industry the right way.
A good dog deserves a good bone.
A valiant man Ought not to undergo, or tempt a danger, But worthily, and by selected ways, He undertakes with reason, not by chance. His valor is the salt t' his other virtues, They're all unseason'd without it.
Heaven prepares good men with crosses; but no ill can happen to a good man.
Where it concerns himself, Who's angry at a slander, makes it true.
Success hath made me wanton.
Force works on servile natures, not the free.
Peace is never more than one thought away.
Wine it is the milk of Venus, And the poet's horse accounted: Ply it and you all are mounted.
The world knows only two, that's Rome and I.
A good life is a main argument.
A good poet's made as well as born.
I see compassion may become a justice, though it be a weakness, I confess, and nearer a vice than a virtue.
Hell itself must yield to industry.
Good men but see death, the wicked taste it.
Cares that have entered once in the breast, will have whole possession of the rest.
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.
Sweet meat must have sour sauce.
Neither do thou lust after that tawny weed tobacco.
Ambition makes more trusty slaves than need
The soul of man is infinite in what it covets.
O, for an engine, to keep back all clocks, or make the sun forget his motion.
He that is respectless in his courses oft sells his reputation at cheap market.
He that departs with his own honesty For Vulgar , doth it too dearly buy.
All concord's born of contraries.
All the wise world is little else, in nature, But parasites or subparasites.
The burnt child dreads the fire.
Silence in woman is like speech in man.
The best pilots have need of mariners, besides sails, anchor and other tackle.
Vice Is like a fury to the vicious mind, And turns delight itself to punishment.
Minds that are great and free, should not on fortune pause: 'Tis crown enough to virtue still, her own applause.
Hang sorrow, care'll kill a cat.
Ods me I marle what pleasure or felicity they have in taking their roguish tobacco. It is good for nothing but to choke a man, and fill him full of smoke and embers.
In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures, life may perfect be.
One woman reads another's character Without the tedious trouble of deciphering
For he that once is good, is ever great.
Tis the common disease of all your musicians that they know no mean, to be entreated, either to begin or end.
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.
The two chief things that give a man reputation in counsel, are the opinion of his honesty, and the opinion of his wisdom; the authority of those two will persuade.
How near to good is what is fair!
How Fortune piles her sports when she begins to practise them.
Fear to do base, unworthy things is valor; if they be one to us, to suffer them is valor too.
The covetous man never has money. The prodigal will have none shortly.
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.
Cut Men's throats with whisperings.
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.
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-.
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.
Books are faithful repositories, which may be awhile neglected or forgotten, but when they are opened again, will again impart their instruction.
For a man to write well, there are required three necessaries: to read the best authors, observe the best speakers, and much exercise of his own style.
That old bald cheater, Time.
Language most shows a man; speak that I may see thee; it springs out of the most retired and inmost parts of us, and is the image of the parent of it, the mind. No glass renders a man's form or likeness so true as his speech.
A good king is a public servant.
Weigh the meaning and look not at the words.
I know no disease of the soul but ignorance, a pernicious evil, the darkener of man's life, the disturber of his reason, and common confounder of truth.
Truth is man's proper good, and the only immortal thing was given to our mortality to use.
No man is so foolish but may give another good counsel sometimes; and no man is so wise, but may easily err, if he will take no others counsel but his own. But very few men are wise by their own counsel; or learned by their own teaching. For he that was only taught by himself had a fool to his master.
Our whole life is like a play.
I do honor the very flea of his dog.
He that would have his virtue published, is not the servant of virtue, but glory.
Opinion is a light, vain, crude, and imperfect thing.
Who falls for love of God, shall rise a star.
True gladness doth not always speak; joy, bred and born but in the tongue, is weak.
He was not of an age, but for all time!
Poets are far rarer birds than kings.
True melancholy breeds your perfect fine wit.
It is the highest of earthly honors to be descended from the great and good. They alone cry out against a noble ancestry who have none of their own.
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.
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.
Fortune, thou hadst no deity, if men Had wisdom.
Out of clothes out of countenance, out of countenance out of wit.
If you succeed not, cast not away the quills yet, nor scratch the wainscot, beat not the poor desk, but bring all to the forge and file again; turn it new.
Love that is ignorant and hatred have almost the same ends.
How ready is heaven to those that pray!
Your highest female grace is silence.
Man and wife make one fool.
When a virtuous man is raised, it brings gladness to his friends, grief to his enemies, and glory to his posterity.
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat.
For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such, As what he loves may never like too much.
Popular men, They must create strange monsters, and then quell them, To make their arts seem something.
Ready writing makes not good writing, but good writing brings on ready writing.
It is an art to have so much judgment as to apparel a lie well, to give it a good dressing.
Mischiefs feed / Like beasts, till they be fat, and then they bleed.
Many punishments sometimes, and in some cases, as much discredit a prince as many funerals a physician.
Art hath an enemy call'd ignorance .
A thankful man owes a courtesy ever; the unthankful but when he needs it.
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.
A good man should and must Sit rather down with loss than rise unjust.
Whom hatred frights, let him not dream of sovereignty.
Reader look, not on his picture but his book.
Were Guilt is, Rage and Courage doth abound.
Greatness of name, in the father, ofttimes helps not forth, but overwhelms the son: They stand too near one another. The shadow kills the growth.
Guilt's a terrible thing.
It holds for good polity ever, to have that outwardly in vilest estimation, which inwardly is most dear to us.
No glass renders a man's form or likeness so true as his speech.
The man that is once hated, both his good and his evil deeds oppress him.
To men pressed by their wants all change is ever welcome.
Indeed there's a woundy luck in names.
I perceive affection makes a fool Of any man too much the father.
Passions are spiritual rebels and raise sedition against the understanding.
The day For whose returns, and many, all these pray; And so do I.
Tell troth and shame the devil.
I glory, more in the cunning purchase of my wealth than in the glad possession.
And where she went, the flowers took thickest root, As she had sow'd them with her odorous foot.
God wisheth none should wreck on a strange shelf: To him man's dearer than to himself.
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.
All discourses but my own afflict me; they seem harsh, impertinent, and irksome
It is as great a spite to be praised in the wrong place, and by a wrong person, as can be done to a noble nature.
Whom the disease of talking still once posses-seth, he can never hold his peace.
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.
Ambition, like a torrent, ne'er looks back; And is a swelling, and the last affection A high mind can put off; being both a rebel Unto the soul and reason, and enforceth All laws, all conscience, treads upon religion, and offereth violence to nature's self.
Custom is the most certain mistress of language, as the public stamp makes the current money.
I'll give anything for a good copy now, be it true or false, so it be news.
I have been at my book; and am now past the craggy paths of study, and come to the flowery plains of honour and reputation
Freedom doth with degree dispense.
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.
Nor use too swelling, or ill-sounded words.
I would rather have a plain down-right wisdom than a foolish and affected eloquence.
Prevent your day at morning.
If all you boast of your great art be true; Sure, willing poverty lives most in you.
Now we are all fallen, youth from their fear, And age from that which bred it, good example.
Spread yourself upon his bosom publicly, whose heart you would eat in private.
Affliction teacheth a wicked person sometime to pray; prosperity never.
There is no doctrine will do good where nature is wanting.
― Ben Jonson Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
