If you be sick, your own thoughts make you sick
—Ben Jonson
Topics: Disease, Sickness
The gods Grow angry with your patience. ‘Tis their care, And must be yours, that guilty men escape not: As crimes do grow, justice should rouse itself.
—Ben Jonson
Topics: Guilt
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
—Ben Jonson
Topics: Drinking
Be not ashamed of thy virtues; honor’s a good brooch to wear in a man’s hat at all times.
—Ben Jonson
Topics: Honor
Drink to me only with thine eyes, And I will pledge with mine; Or leave a kiss but in the cup And I will not look for wine.
—Ben Jonson
Topics: Wine
Envy sets the stronger seal on desert; if he have no enemies, I should esteem his fortune most wretched.
—Ben Jonson
Topics: Envy
‘Tis no shame to follow the better precedent.
—Ben Jonson
Topics: Role models, Imitation
A secret in his mouth is like a wild bird put into a cage; whose door no sooner opens, but it is out.
—Ben Jonson
Topics: Secrecy
O, for an engine, to keep back all clocks, or make the sun forget his motion!
—Ben Jonson
Topics: Time, Time Management
Let them call it mischief; when it’s past and prospered, it will be virtue.
—Ben Jonson
Topics: Success, Revolution
I am grieved that it should be said he is my brother, and take these courses. Well, as he brews, so shall he drink, for George again. Yet he shall hear on’t, and tightly, too, an’ I live, i’faith.
—Ben Jonson
Topics: Drinking
A new disease? I know not, new or old, but it may well be called poor mortals plague for, like a pestilence, it doth infect the houses of the brain till not a thought, or motion, in the mind, be free from the black poison of suspect.
—Ben Jonson
Topics: Doubt
Vice is like a fury to the vicious mind, And turns delight itself to punishment.
—Ben Jonson
Topics: Vice
In sovereignty it is a most happy thing not to be compelled, but so it is a most miserable thing not to be counselled.
—Ben Jonson
Topics: Kings
All concord’s born of contraries.
—Ben Jonson
He knows not his own strength that hath not met adversity.
—Ben Jonson
Topics: Difficulties, Strength, Adversity
Art hath an enemy called ignorance
—Ben Jonson
Topics: Arts, Art, Artists, Enemy
Who falls for the love of God, shall rise a star.
—Ben Jonson
Silence in woman is like speech in men; deny it who can.
—Ben Jonson
Topics: Silence
They that know no evil will suspect none.
—Ben Jonson
Topics: Innocence, Evil
Blueness doth express trueness.
—Ben Jonson
Fear to do base and unworthy things is valor; if they be done to us, to suffer them is also valor.
—Ben Jonson
Topics: Valor
We are persons of quality, I assure you, and women of fashion, and come to see and to be seen.
—Ben Jonson
Topics: Socialism, Communism
What a deal of cold business doth a man misspend the better part of life in! In scattering compliments, tendering visits, gathering and venting news, following feasts and plays, making a little winter-love in a dark corner.
—Ben Jonson
Topics: Man
Guilt’s a terrible thing.
—Ben Jonson
Topics: Guilt
To men pressed by their wants all change is ever welcome.
—Ben Jonson
Topics: Change
No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.
—Ben Jonson
Topics: Advice
Nay, if he take you in hand, sir, with an argument, He’ll bray you in a mortar.
—Ben Jonson
Topics: Arguments
Ambition makes more trusty slaves than need
—Ben Jonson
Topics: Ambition
He was a man versed in the world, as pilot in his compass; the needle pointed ever to that interest which was his loadstar; and he spread his sails with vantage to the gale of others’ passions.
—Ben Jonson
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- John Webster English Dramatist
- John Gay English Poet, Dramatist
- Francis Beaumont English Playwright
- Philip Massinger English Playwright
- John Lyly English Dramatist, Author
- W. S. Gilbert English Dramatist
- William Wycherley English Dramatist
- Arthur Wing Pinero English Playwright
- Arthur Helps British Essayist, Historian
- Douglas William Jerrold English Dramatist
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