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Ben Jonson Quotes
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Benjamin Jonson was an English playwright and poet, whose artistry exerted a lasting impact upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours. He is best known for the satirical plays Every Man in His Humour , Volpone, or The Fox , The Alchemist and Bartholomew Fair and for his lyric and epigrammatic poetry. "He is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare, during the reign of James I."Jonson was a classically educated, well-read and cultured man of the English Renaissance with an appetite for controversy whose cultural influence was of unparalleled breadth upon the playwrights and the poets of the Jacobean era and of the Caroline era . Wikipedia  

✵ 21. June 1572 – 6. August 1637
Ben Jonson photo
Ben Jonson: 93   quotes 6   likes

Ben Jonson Quotes

“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

Sport

“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)

Sun

“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

Sense , Parting

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

Ben Jonson

Sejanus (1603), Act I

“I will eat exceedingly, and prophesy.”

Ben Jonson Bartholomew Fayre: A Comedy

Bartholomew Fair (1614), Act I, scene vi

“Truth is the trial of itself
And needs no other touch,
And purer than the purest gold,
Refine it ne'er so much.”

Ben Jonson

The Touchstone of Truth (1624), lines 1-4

Truth

“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.”

Ben Jonson

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

Art , Learning

“Get money; still get money, boy,
No matter by what means.”

Ben Jonson Every Man in His Humour

Act ii, Scene 3. Compare: "Get place and wealth,—if possible, with grace; If not, by any means get wealth and place", Alexander Pope, Horace, book i. epistle i. line 103
Every Man in His Humour (1598)

Money , Boy

“I never thought an angry person valiant:
Virtue is never aided by a vice.”

Ben Jonson The New Inn

Lovel, Act IV, Scene iii
The New Inn, or The Light Heart (licensed 19 January 1629; printed 1631)

Personality

“Opinion is a light, vain, crude, and imperfect thing.”

Ben Jonson

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

Light

“It was a mighty while ago.”

Ben Jonson Every Man in His Humour

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

“Rhyme, the rack of finest wits,
That expresseth but by fits,
True conceit,
Spoiling senses of their treasure,
Cozening judgement with a measure,
But false weight.
Wresting words from their true calling;
Propping verse, for fear of falling
To the ground.
Jointing syllables, drowning letters,
Fastening vowels, as with fetters
They were bound!”

Ben Jonson

XXIX, A Fit of Rhyme Against Rhyme, lines 1-12
The Works of Ben Jonson, Second Folio (1640), Underwoods

Fear , Sense , Falseness

“His opinion of verses.
That he wrote all his first in prose, for so his master Camden had learned him.

That verses stood by sense without either colours or accent; which yet other times he denied.”

Ben Jonson

Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden (1711)

Sense , Learning , Time

“Though the most be players, some must be spectators.”

Ben Jonson

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

“He is a narrow-minded man, that affects a triumph in any glorious study; but to triumph in a lie, and a lie themselves have forged, is frontless. Folly often goes beyond her bounds; but Impudence knows none.”

Ben Jonson

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

Lie , Study

“The Devil is an Ass, I do acknowledge it.”

Ben Jonson

"Pug"; Act IV, scene 4
The Devil Is an Ass (performed 1616; published 1631)

“It must be done like lightning.”

Ben Jonson Every Man in His Humour

Act iv, Scene v
Every Man in His Humour (1598)

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

Ben Jonson