Quotes by Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson

British Dramatist, Poet

Alive from: 1573-1637

Quotes 1 till 15 of 52.

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

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

• Ben Jonson

  

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  A gentleman reading a poem that began with Where is that man that never yet did hear
  Of fair Penelope, Ulysses' queen? 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.
  Source: Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden

• Ben Jonson

  

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  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.

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  A woman, the more curious she is about her face, is commonly the more careless about her house.
  Source: Underwoods. Timber; or, Discoveries made upon men and matter. Horace, Of the art of poetry [with an English translation by Jonson]. The English gramma

• Ben Jonson

  

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  All concord's born of contraries.

• Ben Jonson

  

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  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.
  Source: Catiline His Conspiracy

• Ben Jonson

  

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  Blueness doth express trueness.

• Ben Jonson

  

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  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.
  Source: Conversations of Ben Jonson with William Drummond of Hawthornden

• Ben Jonson

  

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  Follow a shadow, it still flies you;
  Seem to fly it, it will pursue:
  So court a mistress, she denies you;
  Let her alone, she will court you.
  Source: The Works of Ben Jonson, First Folio That Women Are But Mens Shadows, lines 1-4.

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  Good men are the stars, the planets of the ages wherein they live, and illustrate the times.

• Ben Jonson

  

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  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.
  Source: The Works of Ben Jonson, Second Folio

• Ben Jonson

  

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  He cursed Petrarch for redacting verses to sonnets, which he said were like that tyrant's bed, where some who were too short were racked, others too long cut short.
  Source: Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden

• Ben Jonson

  

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  He hath consumed a whole night in lying looking to his great toe, about which he hath seen Tartars and Turks, Romans and Carthaginians, fight in his imagination.
  Source: Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden

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  He knows not his own strength that hath not met adversity