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If all you boast of your great art be true Sure, willing poverty lives most in you.

Ben Jonson

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Ben Jonson
Age: 65 †
Born: 1572
Born: June 21
Died: 1637
Died: August 6
Actor
Literary Critic
Playwright
Poet
Writer
City of Westminster
Benjamin Jonson
Art
True
Great
Boast
Poverty
Willing
Sure
Lives

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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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It is an art to have so much judgment as to apparel a lie well, to give it a good dressing.
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Forbear, you things That stand upon the pinnacles of state, To boast your slippery height! when you do fall, You dash yourselves in pieces, ne'er to rise: And he that lends you pity, is not wise.
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Now we are all fallen, youth from their fear, And age from that which bred it, good example.
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I have no urns, no dusty monuments No broken images of ancestors, Wanting an ear, or nose no forged tales Of long descents, to boast false honors from.
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The man that is once hated, both his good and his evil deeds oppress him.
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The soul of man is infinite in what it covets.
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Drink to me only with thine eyes, And I will pledge with mine Or leave a kiss but in the cup And I'll not look for wine.
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Tis not the wholesome sharp mortality, Or modest anger of a satiric spirit, That hurts or wounds the body of a state, But the sinister application Of the malicious, ignorant, and base Interpreter who will distort and strain The general scope and purpose of an author To his particular and private spleen.
Ben Jonson
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Cares that have entered once in the breast, will have whole possession of the rest.
Ben Jonson
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I remember, the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never plotted out a line. My answer hath been, would he had blotted a thousand.
Ben Jonson
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It is less dishonor to hear imperfectly than to speak imperfectly. The ears are excused the understanding is not.
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Blueness doth express trueness.
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Court a mistress, she denies you let her alone, she will court you.
Ben Jonson
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One woman reads another's character Without the tedious trouble of deciphering
Ben Jonson
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Nothing is more short-lived than pride.
Ben Jonson
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Where dost thou careless lie, Buried in ease and sloth? Knowledge that sleeps, doth die And this security, It is the common moth, That eats on wits and arts, and oft destroys them both.
Ben Jonson
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In the hope to meet Shortly again, and make our absence sweet.
Ben Jonson
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There is no doctrine will do good where nature is wanting.
Ben Jonson
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Words borrowed of Antiquity do lend a kind of Majesty to style, and are not without their delight sometimes. For they have the authority of years, and out of their intermission do win to themselves a kind of grace-like newness. But the eldest of the present, and newest of the past Language, is the best.
Ben Jonson