Ben Jonson Quotes

The ports of death are sins; of life, good deeds: Through which our merit leads us to our meeds. How willful blind is he then, that would stray, And hath it in his powers, to make his way! This world death's region is, the other life's: And here, it should be one of our first strifes, So to front death, as men might judge us past it. For good men but see death, the wicked taste it.

PEREGRINE
It seems, Sir, you know all.

POLITICK WOULD-BE
Not all, Sir: but
I have some general notions. I do love
To note, and to observe: though I live out
From the active torrent: yet I’ll mark
The currents and the passages of things
For mine own private use.

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

drink to the cause, and pure vapours

A gentleman reading a poem that began with Where 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.

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

As he brews, so shall he drink.

A good life is a main argument.

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

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

There shall be no love lost.

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.

Indeed there's a woundy luck in names.

Those that merely talk and never think, That live in the wild anarchy of drink.

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.