Top 160 Ben Jonson Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “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

102. “A good man should and must Sit rather down with loss than rise unjust.”

— Ben Jonson

103. “Force works on servile natures, not the free.”

— Ben Jonson

104. “Memory, of all the powers of the mind, is the most delicate and frail.”

— Ben Jonson

105. “I am beholden to calumny, that she hath so endeavored to belie me.-It shall make me set a surer guard on myself, and keep a better watch upon my actions.”

— Ben Jonson

106. “Good men are the stars, the planets of the ages wherein they live, and illustrate the times.”

— Ben Jonson

107. “Who will not judge him worthy to be robbed That sets his doors wide open to a thief, And shows the felon where his treasure lies?”

— Ben Jonson

108. “Art hath an enemy call’d ignorance .”

— Ben Jonson

109. “Poor wretches! I rather pity their folly and indiscretion, than their loss of time and money; for these may be recovered by industry: but to be a fool born is a disease incurable.”

— Ben Jonson

110. “Cut Men’s throats with whisperings.”

— Ben Jonson

111. “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-.”

— Ben Jonson

112. “I see compassion may become a justice, though it be a weakness, I confess, and nearer a vice than a virtue.”

— Ben Jonson

113. “The covetous man never has money. The prodigal will have none shortly.”

— Ben Jonson

114. “The way to rise is to obey and please.”

— Ben Jonson

115. “Folly often goes beyond her bounds, but impudence knows none.”

— Ben Jonson

116. “Passions are spiritual rebels and raise sedition against the understanding.”

— Ben Jonson

117. “Let them call it mischief; when it is past and prospered, it will be virtue.”

— Ben Jonson

118. “My thoughts and I were of another world.”

— Ben Jonson

119. “Popular men, They must create strange monsters, and then quell them, To make their arts seem something.”

— Ben Jonson

120. “Affliction teacheth a wicked person sometime to pray; prosperity never.”

— Ben Jonson

121. “We are persons of quality, I assure you, and women of fashion, and come to see and to be seen.”

— Ben Jonson

122. “Truth is man’s proper good, and the only immortal thing was given to our mortality to use.”

— Ben Jonson

123. “Neither do thou lust after that tawny weed tobacco.”

— Ben Jonson

124. “I am now past the craggy paths of study, and come to the flowery plains of honor and reputation.”

— Ben Jonson

125. “It is virtue that gives glory; that will endenizen a man everywhere.”

— Ben Jonson

126. “Tis the common disease of all your musicians that they know no mean, to be entreated, either to begin or end.”

— Ben Jonson

127. “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.”

— Ben Jonson

128. “Let those that merely talk and never think, That live in the wild anarchy of drink.”

— Ben Jonson

129. “Tell troth and shame the devil.”

— Ben Jonson

130. “He wil sooner lose his best friend, then his least jest.”

— Ben Jonson

131. “Indeed there’s a woundy luck in names.”

— Ben Jonson

132. “God wisheth none should wreck on a strange shelf: To him man’s dearer than to himself.”

— Ben Jonson

133. “O, for an engine, to keep back all clocks, or make the sun forget his motion!”

— Ben Jonson

134. “Books are faithful repositories, which may be awhile neglected or forgotten, but when they are opened again, will again impart their instruction.”

— Ben Jonson

135. “Nothing is more short-lived than pride.”

— Ben Jonson

136. “As it is a great point of art, when our matter requires it, to enlarge and veer out all sail, so to take it in and contract it is of no less praise when the argument doth ask it.”

— Ben Jonson

137. “How Fortune piles her sports when she begins to practise them!”

— Ben Jonson

138. “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.”

— Ben Jonson

139. “Freedom doth with degree dispense.”

— Ben Jonson

140. “Wine it is the milk of Venus, And the poet’s horse accounted: Ply it and you all are mounted.”

— Ben Jonson

141. “Love that is ignorant and hatred have almost the same ends.”

— Ben Jonson

142. “There is no doctrine will do good where nature is wanting.”

— Ben Jonson

143. “It is an art to have so much judgment as to apparel a lie well, to give it a good dressing.”

— Ben Jonson

144. “Honor’s a good brooch to wear in a man’s hat at all times.”

— Ben Jonson

145. “O! How vain and vile a passion is this fear! What base uncomely things it makes men do.”

— Ben Jonson

146. “Guilt’s a terrible thing.”

— Ben Jonson

147. “How ready is heaven to those that pray!”

— Ben Jonson

148. “He that would have his virtue published, is not the servant of virtue, but glory.”

— Ben Jonson

149. “The man that is once hated, both his good and his evil deeds oppress him.”

— Ben Jonson

150. “Whosoever loves not picture is injurious to truth, and all the wisdom of poetry. Picture is the invention of heaven, the most ancient and most akin to nature. It is itself a silent work, and always one and the same habit.”

— Ben Jonson