79 Famous Quotes by Ben Jonson
6/11/1572 - 8/6/1637
Professions:
Information:
About Ben Jonson
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.
It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May,
Although it falls and die that night--
It was the plant and flower of Light.
Trees
Quotes, by Ben Jonson , Source: Pindaric Ode on the Death of Sir H. Morison
|
I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree.
. . . .
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
Trees
Quotes, by Ben Jonson , Source: Pindaric Ode on the Death of Sir H. Morison
|
|
Yet shall you have to rectify your palate,
An olive, capers, or some better salad
Ushering the mutton; with a short-legged hen,
If we can get her, full of eggs, and then,
Limons, and wine for sauce: to these a coney
Is not to be despaired of for our money;
And though fowl now be scarce, yet there are clerks,
The sky not falling, think we may have larks.
Eating
Quotes, by Ben Jonson , Source: Epigram CI
|
|
|
In the hope to meet
Shortly again, and make our absence sweet.
Absence
Quotes, by Ben Jonson , Source: Underwoods--Miscellaneous Poems (LIX)
|
Yet the best pilots have need of mariners, besides sails, anchor
and other tackle.
Navigation
Quotes, by Ben Jonson , Source: Discoveries--Illiteratus Princeps
|
--They write here one Cornelius--Son
Hath made the Hollanders an invisible eel
To swim the haven at Dunkirk, and sink all
The shipping there.
--But how is't done?
--I'll show you, sir.
It is automa, runs under water
With a snug nose, and has a nimble tail
Made like an auger, with which tail she wriggles
Betwixt the costs of a ship and sinks it straight.
Navigation
Quotes, by Ben Jonson , Source: Staple of News (act III, sc. 1)
|
But I do hate him as I hate the devil.
Hatred
Quotes, by Ben Jonson , Source: Every Man Out of his Humour (act I, sc, 1)
|
|
|
|
|
The Devil is an ass, I do acknowledge it.
Devil
Quotes, by Ben Jonson , Source: The Devil is an Ass (act IV, sc. 1)
|
|
|
|
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.
Advice / experience / wisdom
Quotes, by Ben Jonson
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
