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
The two chief things that give a man reputation in counsel, are the opinion of his honesty, and the opinion of his wisdom; the authority of those two will persuade.
Honor's a good brooch to wear in a man's hat at all times.
The man that is once hated, both his good and his evil deeds oppress him.
What excellent fools religion makes of men.
Language most shows a man, speak that I may see thee.
Man and wife make one fool.
A good man should and must Sit rather down with loss than rise unjust.
Popular men, They must create strange monsters, and then quell them, To make their arts seem something.
Men that talk of their own benefits are not believed to talk of them because they have done them, but to have done them because they might talk of them.
Fortune, thou hadst no deity, if men Had wisdom.
Ods me I marle what pleasure or felicity they have in taking their roguish tobacco. It is good for nothing but to choke a man, and fill him full of smoke and embers.
When a virtuous man is raised, it brings gladness to his friends, grief to his enemies, and glory to his posterity.
If men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the offices and function of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the impossibility of any man's being a good poet without first being a good man.
I have discovered that a famed familiarity in great ones is a note of certain usurpation on the less; for great and popular men feign themselves to be servants to others to make those slaves to them.