“It was a mighty while ago.”
Act i, Scene 3
Every Man in His Humour (1598)
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Ben Jonson 93
English writer 1572–1637Related quotes

“Take, O take him, mighty Leader,
Take again thy servant's soul,
To the house from which he wandered
Exiled, erring, long ago.”
Illic, precor, optime ductor,<br/>famulam tibi praecipe mentem,<br/>genitali in sede sacrari<br/>quam liquerat exsul et errans.
Illic, precor, optime ductor,
famulam tibi praecipe mentem,
genitali in sede sacrari
quam liquerat exsul et errans.
"Hymnus X: Ad Exequias Defuncti", line 165; translation from Helen Waddell Mediaeval Latin Lyrics (London: Constable, [1929] 1943) p. 47.

Earlier in the chapter Holmes says that all the comparisons and analogies ever made "would be but a cupful from the infinite ocean of similitudes and analogies that rolls through the universe".
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

Source: Caliban's War (2012), Chapter 30 (p. 334)

“To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.”

“No, let the monarch’s bags and others hold
The flattering, mighty, nay, al-mighty gold.”
To Kien Long; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Ode iv. Compare: "Whilst that for which all virtue now is sold,
And almost every vice,—almighty gold", Ben Jonson, Epistle to Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland.

Teddy Bear
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