Ben Jonson Quotes

Drink today, and drown all sorrow;
You shall perhaps not do it tomorrow;
Best, while you have it, use your breath;
There is no drinking after death.

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

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

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...

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.

Poor wretches! I rather pity their folly and indiscretion, than their loss of time and money; for these may be recovered by industry: but to be a fool born is a disease incurable.

I now think, Love is rather deaf, than blind, For else it could not be, That she, Whom I adore so much, should so slight me, And cast my love behind.

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.

To speak and to speak well, are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.

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.

Courses even with the sun Doth her mighty brother run.

He was not of an age, but for all time.

I will eat exceedingly, and prophesy.

The world knows only two, — that's Rome and I.

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