Ben Jonson quotes:

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

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.

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

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

Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak, and to speak well, are two things.

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.

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

Sweet Swan of Avon! What a sight it were To see thee in our water yet appear.

Blueness doth express trueness.

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.

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

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.

Weigh the meaning and look not at the words.

Of all wild beasts preserve me from a tyrant; and of all tame a flatterer.

Court a mistress, she denies you; let her alone, she will court you.

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.

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

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

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.

Still to be neat, still to be drest, As you were going to a feast, Still to be powder'd, all perfum'd. Lady, it is to be presumed, Though art's hid causes are not found, All is not sweet, all is not sound.

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.

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.

I am beholden to calumny, that she hath so endeavored to belie me.-It shall make me set a surer guard on myself, and keep a better watch upon my actions.

Come, my Celia, let us prove, While we can, the sports of love, Time will not be ours for ever, He, at length, our good will sever; Spend not then his gifts in vain: Suns that set may rise again; But if once we lose this light, 'Tis with us perpetual night. Why should we defer our joys? Fame and rumour are but toys.

The soul of man is infinite in what it covets.

They that know no evil will suspect none.

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?

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

A good dog deserves a good bone.

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.

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

If you be sick, your own thoughts make you sick

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-.

Let them call it mischief; when it is past and prospered, it will be virtue.

In the hope to meet Shortly again, and make our absence sweet.

A prince without letters is a Pilot without eyes. All his government is groping.

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

The pipe marks the point at which the orangutan ends and man begins.

The poet is the nearest borderer upon the orator.

All the wise world is little else, in nature, But parasites or subparasites.

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.

[The play] is like to be a very conceited scurvy one, in plain English.

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

A lily of a day Is fairer far in May, Although it fall and die that night, It was the plant and flower of light. In small proportions we just beauties see, And in short measures life may perfect be.

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

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

Memory, of all the powers of the mind, is the most delicate and frail.

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.

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.

Folly often goes beyond her bounds, but impudence knows 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.

Who casts to write a living line, must sweat

Apes are apes, though clothed in scarlet.

Ambition makes more trusty slaves than need.

Neither do thou lust after that tawny weed tobacco.

He threatens many that hath injured one.

Mischiefs feed / Like beasts, till they be fat, and then they bleed.

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!

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

Many might go to heaven with half the labor they go to hell.

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

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

Cut Men's throats with whisperings.

Soul of the age! The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage! My Shakespeare , rise; I will not lodge thee by Chaucer or Spenser , or bid Beaumont lie A little further, to make thee a room; Thou art a monument, without a tomb, And art alive still, while thy book doth live, And we have wits to read , and praise to give .

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.

Sweet meat must have sour sauce.

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.

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

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.

It is a note Of upstart greatness to observe and watch For these poor trifles, which the noble mind Neglects and scorns.

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.

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.

And where she went, the flowers took thickest root, As she had sow'd them with her odorous foot.

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?

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.

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

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.

This is the very womb and bed of enormity.

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

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

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

Ambition, like a torrent, never looks back.

Calumnies are answered best with silence.

The dignity of truth is lost with much protesting.

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.

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.

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

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.

If I freely may discover What should please me in my lover, I would have her fair and witty, Savouring more of court than city; A little proud, but full of pity; Light and humorous in her toying, Oft building hopes, and soon destroying, Long, but sweet in the enjoying; Neither too easy nor to hard; All extremes I would have barr'd.

Nor shall our cups make any guilty men; But at our parting, we will be, as when We innocently met.

Heaven prepares good men with crosses; but no ill can happen to a good man.

Confound these ancestors... They've stolen our best ideas!

O! How vain and vile a passion is this fear! What base uncomely things it makes men do.

All concord's born of contraries.

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

A good life is a main argument.

Let those that merely talk and never think, That live in the wild anarchy of drink

Out of clothes out of countenance, out of countenance out of wit.

Fortune, thou hadst no deity, if men Had wisdom.

Good men but see death, the wicked taste it.

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.

Fear to do base, unworthy things is valor; if they be one to us, to suffer them is valor too.

... the best pilots have need of mariners, besides sails, anchor and other tackle.

I am now past the craggy paths of study, and come to the flowery plains of honor and reputation.

All discourses but my own afflict me; they seem harsh, impertinent, and irksome

Man and wife make one fool.

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.

There is no doctrine will do good where nature is wanting.

Minds that are great and free, should not on fortune pause: 'Tis crown enough to virtue still, her own applause.

How Fortune piles her sports when she begins to practise them!

Books are faithful repositories, which may be awhile neglected or forgotten, but when they are opened again, will again impart their instruction.

The way to rise is to obey and please.

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.

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

He that would have his virtue published, is not the servant of virtue, but glory.

I have discovered that a famed familiarity in great ones is a note of certain usurpation on the less; for great and popular men feign themselves to be servants to others to make those slaves to them.

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.

Guilt's a terrible thing.

Hell itself must yield to industry.