Ben Jonson: Trending quotes (page 3)

Ben Jonson Every Man in His Humour

Act ii, Scene 1
Every Man in His Humour (1598)

Drink

“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.”

Ben Jonson

XXIII, An Ode, to Himself, lines 1-6
The Works of Ben Jonson, Second Folio (1640), Underwoods

Lie , Art , Knowledge , Sleep

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

Ben Jonson

LXI, To Fool, or Knave, lines 1-2
The Works of Ben Jonson, First Folio (1616), Epigrams

“One, though he be excellent and the chief, is not to be imitated alone; for never no imitator ever grew up to his author; likeness is always on this side truth. Yet there happened in my time one noble speaker, who was full of gravity in his speaking; his language (where he could spare or pass by a jest) was nobly censorious. No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough, or look aside from him, without loss. He commanded where he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion. No man had their affections more in his power. The fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make an end.”

Ben Jonson

Referring to Francis Bacon
The Works of Ben Jonson, Second Folio (1640), Timber: or Discoveries

Truth , Fear , Suffering , Loss

“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.”

Ben Jonson

Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden (1711)

Imagination , Lying , Fight , Night

“That old bald cheater, Time.”

Ben Jonson The Poetaster

The Poetaster (1601), Act I, scene i

Time

“Still to be powder'd, still perfum'd,
Lady, it is to be presum'd,
Though art's hid causes are not found,
All is not sweet, all is not sound.
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.”

Ben Jonson

Epicene, or The Silent Woman (1609), Act I, scene i

Art , Heart

“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.”

Ben Jonson

Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden (1711)

“There's reason good, that you good laws should make:
Men's manners ne'er were viler, for your sake.”

Ben Jonson

XXIV, To The Parliament, lines 1-2
The Works of Ben Jonson, First Folio (1616), Epigrams

Men , Law

“A good life is a main argument.”

Ben Jonson

The Works of Ben Jonson, Second Folio (1640), Timber: or Discoveries

Life

“He saw in a vision his eldest son (then a child and at London) appear unto him with the mark of a bloody cross on his forehead, as if it had been cutted with a sword, at which amazed he prayed unto God, and in the morning he came to Mr. Camden's chamber to tell him, who persuaded him it was but an apprehension of his fantasy at which he should not be disjected; in the meantime comes there letters from his wife of the death of that boy in the plague. He appeared to him (he said) of a manly shape, and of that growth that he thinks he shall be at the resurrection.”

Ben Jonson

Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden (1711)

Death , God , Boy , Thinking

“In the meantime, to all suits, to all entreaties, to all letters, to all tricks, I will be deaf as an adder, blind as a beetle, lay mine ear to the ground, and lock mine eyes i' my hand against all temptations.”

Ben Jonson Eastward Hoe

Act v, scene ii, lines 68-70
Eastward Hoe (1605)

“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.”

Ben Jonson Catiline His Conspiracy

Catiline His Conspiracy (1611), Act III, scene ii

Religion , Law , Soul , Nature

“The burnt child dreads the fire.”

Ben Jonson

Act I, scene 2
The Devil Is an Ass (performed 1616; published 1631)

“Thus, in his belly, can he change a sin,
Lust it comes out, that gluttony went in.”

Ben Jonson

CXVIII, On Gut, lines 5-6
The Works of Ben Jonson, First Folio (1616), Epigrams

Change

“Reader, look,
Not at his picture, but his book.”

Ben Jonson

To the Reader [On the portrait of Shakespeare prefixed to the First Folio] (1618), lines 9-10

Books

“It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log, dry, bald and sere:
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.”

Ben Jonson

LXX, To the Immortal Memory of Sir Lucius Cary and Sir Henry Morison, lines 65-74
The Works of Ben Jonson, Second Folio (1640), Underwoods

Life , Beauty , Flowers , Tree

“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.”

Ben Jonson

That Women Are But Men's Shadows, lines 1-4
The Works of Ben Jonson, First Folio (1616), The Forest

Flying

“It is an art to have so much judgment as to apparel a lie well, to give it a good dressing.”

Ben Jonson

The Works of Ben Jonson, Second Folio (1640), Timber: or Discoveries

Lie , Art

“Still may syllabes jar with time,
Still may reason war with rhyme,
Resting never!”

Ben Jonson

XXIX, A Fit of Rhyme Against Rhyme
The Works of Ben Jonson, Second Folio (1640), Underwoods

War , Time