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It is as great a spite to be praised in the wrong place, and by a wrong person, as can be done to a noble nature.

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
Person
Done
Praised
Great
Spite
Noble
Wrong
Nature
Place
Persons

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No glass renders a man's form or likeness so true as his speech.
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Good men are the stars, the planets of the ages wherein they live, and illustrate the times.
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Follow a shadow, it still flies you, Seem to fly, it will pursue: So court a mistress, she denies you Let her alone, she will court you. Say are not women truly, then, Styled but the shadows of us men?
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Whom the disease of talking still once posses-seth, he can never hold his peace.
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What excellent fools religion makes of men.
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If all you boast of your great art be true Sure, willing poverty lives most in you.
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How near to good is what is fair!
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Of all wild beasts preserve me from a tyrant and of all tame a flatterer.
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It is the highest of earthly honors to be descended from the great and good. They alone cry out against a noble ancestry who have none of their own.
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Nothing is a courtesy unless it be meant us, and that friendly and lovingly. We owe no thanks to rivers that they carry our boats, or winds that they be favoring and fill our sails, or meats that they be nourishing for these are what they are necessarily. Horses carry us, trees shade us but they know it not.
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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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I see compassion may become a justice, though it be a weakness, I confess, and nearer a vice than a virtue.
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Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short And done, we straight repent us of the sport: Let us not rush blindly on unto it, Like lustful beasts, that only know to do it: For lust will languish, and that heat decay, But thus, thus, keeping endless Holy-.
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Force works on servile natures, not the free.
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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.
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Each petty hand Can steer a ship becalm'd but he that will Govern and carry her to her ends, must know His tides, his currents, how to shift his sails What she will bear in foul, what in fair weathers Where her springs are, her leaks, and how to stop 'em What strands, what shelves, what rocks do threaten her.
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To men pressed by their wants all change is ever welcome.
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He was not of an age, but for all time!
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Well, as he brews, so shall he drink.
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