Ben Jonson Quotes

• Freedom doth with degree dispense.

  Ben Jonson

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• Then hath thy orchard fruit, thy garden flowers, Fresh as the air, and new as are the hours. The early cherry, with the later plum, Fig, grape, and quince, each in his time doth come: The blushing apricot, and woolly peach Hang on thy walls, that every child may reach.

  Ben Jonson

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• Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show Of touch or marble, nor canst boast a row Of polished pillars, or a roof of gold; Thou hast no lantern whereof tales are told, Or stair, or courts; but standst an ancient pile, And these grudged at, art reverenced the while.

  Ben Jonson

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• Nor shall our cups make any guilty men: But, at our parting, we will be, as when We innocently met. No simple word, That shall be utter’d at our mirthful board, Shall make us sad next morning: or affright The liberty, that we’ll enjoy tonight.

  Ben Jonson

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• I see compassion may become a justice, though it be a weakness, I confess, and nearer a vice than a virtue.

  Ben Jonson

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• There is a doing of right out of wrong, if the ways be found.

  Ben Jonson

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• He is a fellow of a most arrogant and invincible dullness, I assure you.

  Ben Jonson

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• Winlittlewit: Come, indeed, la, you are such a fool, still! Littlewit: No, but half a one, Win; you are the t’other half: man and wife make one fool, Win.

  Ben Jonson

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• [The play] is like to be a very conceited scurvy one, in plain English.

  Ben Jonson

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• A man of your head and hair should owe more to that reverend ceremony, and not mount the marriage bed like a town-bull, or a mountain-goat; but stay the due season and ascend it then with religion and fear.

  Ben Jonson

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• Let me see: all discourses but mine own afflict me; they seem harsh, impertinent, and irksome.

  Ben Jonson

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• Still to be neat, still to be drest, As you were going to a feast; Still to be powdered, still perfumed, Lady, it is to be presumed, Though art’s hid causes are not found, All is not sweet, all is not sound. Give me a look, give me a face, That makes simplicity a grace; Robes loosely flowing, hair as free: Such sweet neglect more taketh me, Than all the adulteries of art; They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.

  Ben Jonson

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• A pox of her autumnal face, her pieced beauty!

  Ben Jonson

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• I’d have your tongue, sir, tipped with gold for this.

  Ben Jonson

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• His soul moves in his fee.

  Ben Jonson

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• Come, my Celia, let us prove, While we can, the sports of love, Time will not be ours for ever, He, at length, our good will sever; Spend not then his gifts in vain: Suns that set may rise again; But if once we lose this light, ’Tis with us perpetual night. Why should we defer our joys? Fame and rumour are but toys.

  Ben Jonson

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• All my house, But now, steamed like a bath with her thick breath. A lawyer could not have been heard; nor scarce Another woman, such a hail of words She has let fall.

  Ben Jonson

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• Success hath made me wanton.

  Ben Jonson

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• Ay, a plague on’t, My conscience fools my wit!

  Ben Jonson

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• Calumnies are answered best with silence.

  Ben Jonson

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Ben Jonson (82)

Birth:	11th June, 1572
Death:	6th August, 1637
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Actor, Dramatist, Poet

About

Benjamin Ben Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems. A man of vast reading and a seemingly insatiable appetite for controversy, Jonson had an unparalleled breadth of influence on Jacobean and Caroline playwrights and poets. In 1598 Jonson produced his first great success, Every Man in His Humour, capitalising on the vogue for humorous plays which George Chapman had begun with An Humorous Day's Mirth. William Shakespeare was among the first actors to be cast. At his death in 1637 he seems to have been working on another play, The Sad Shepherd.

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