Ben Jonson: Trending quotes

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Ben Jonson: 186 quotes6 likes

“Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears:
Yet, slower, yet; O faintly, gentle springs:
List to the heavy part the music bears,
Woe weeps out her division, when she sings.
Droop herbs, and flowers,
Fall grief in showers,
Our beauties are not ours;
O, I could still,
Like melting snow upon some craggy hill,
Drop, drop, drop, drop,
Since nature's pride is now, a withered daffodil.”

Ben Jonson Cynthia's Revels

Cynthia's Revels (1600), Act I, scene i

“There shall be no love lost.”

Ben Jonson Every Man out of His Humour

Every Man out of His Humour (1598), Act II, scene 1. Compare: "There is no love lost between us", Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, part ii, chapter xxxiii

“A gentleman reading a poem that began withWhere is that man that never yet did hear
Of fair Penelope, Ulysses' queen?[Jonson] 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.”

Ben Jonson

Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden (1711)

“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.”

Ben Jonson Cynthia's Revels

Cynthia's Revels (1600), Act V, scene iii

“Calumnies are answered best with silence.”

Ben Jonson Volpone

Volpone (1606), Act II, scene ii

“I loved the man and do honor his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any.”

Ben Jonson

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

“That Donne himself, for not being understood, would perish.”

Ben Jonson

Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden (1711)

“That Shakespeare wanted Art.”

Ben Jonson

Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden (1711)

“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.”

Ben Jonson

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

“If he were
To be made honest by an act of parliament
I should not alter in my faith of him.”

Ben Jonson

Act IV, scene 1
The Devil Is an Ass (performed 1616; published 1631)

“Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak, and to speak well, are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks…”

Ben Jonson

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

“Have paid scot and lot there any time this eighteen years.”

Ben Jonson Every Man in His Humour

Act iii, Scene 3
Every Man in His Humour (1598)

“For if I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee surely with thy peers,
And tell how far thou didst our Lily outshine,
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlow's mighty line.
And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,
From thence to honour thee, I will not seek
For names…”

Ben Jonson

Source: To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare (1618), Lines 27 - 33

“What gentle ghost, besprent with April dew,
Hails me so solemnly to yonder yew?”

Ben Jonson

Elegy on the Lady Jane Pawlet, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919); comparable to "What beckoning ghost along the moonlight shade / Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?", Alexander Pope, in To the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady.

“I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, "Would he had blotted a thousand."”

Ben Jonson

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

“Courses even with the sun
Doth her mighty brother run.”

Ben Jonson

The Gipsies Metamorphosed, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Still to be neat, still to be drest,
As you were going to a feast.”

Ben Jonson

Epicene, or The Silent Woman (1609), Act I, scene i; a translation from Bonnefonius

“The voice so sweet, the words so fair,
As some soft chime had stroked the air;
And, though the sound were parted thence,
Still left an echo in the sense.”

Ben Jonson

LXXXIV, Eupheme, part 4, lines 37-40
The Works of Ben Jonson, Second Folio (1640), Underwoods