Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson
Benjamin "Ben" Jonsonwas an English playwright, poet, actor and literary critic of the 17th century, whose artistry exerted a lasting impact upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours. He is best known for the satirical plays Every Man in His Humour, Volpone, or The Foxe, The Alchemistand Bartholomew Fayre: A Comedyand for his lyric poetry; he is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare, during the reign of James I...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth11 June 1572
Soul of the age! The applause! delight! The wonder of our stage!
Indeed there's a woundy luck in names.
Mischiefs feed / Like beasts, till they be fat, and then they bleed.
Woman, the more careful she is about her face, the more careless about her house.
That praises are without reason lavished on the dead, and that the honours due only to are paid to antiquity, is a complaint likely to be always continued by those who, being able to add nothing to truth, hope for eminence from the heresies of paradox; or those who, being forced by disappointment upon consolatory expedients, are willing to hope from posterity what the present age refuses, and flatter themselves that the regard which is yet denied by envy will be at last bestowed by time.
Ambition makes more trusty slaves than need
I'll give anything for a good copy now, be it true or false, so it be news.
Hang sorrow, care'll kill a cat.
Tell troth and shame the devil.
Very few men are wise by their own council, or learned by their own teaching. For he that was only taught by himself, had a fool for a master.
The world knows only two, that's Rome and I.
If you succeed not, cast not away the quills yet, nor scratch the wainscot, beat not the poor desk, but bring all to the forge and file again; turn it new.
And where she went, the flowers took thickest root, As she had sow'd them with her odorous foot.
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.