Top 160 Ben Jonson Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Whom the disease of talking still once posses-seth, he can never hold his peace.”

— Ben Jonson

152. “Cares that have entered once in the breast, will have whole possession of the rest.”

— Ben Jonson

153. “Where it concerns himself, Who’s angry at a slander, makes it true.”

— Ben Jonson

154. “I feel my griefs too, and there scarce is ground Upon my flesh t’inflict another wound. Yet dare I not complain, or wish for death With holy Paul; lest it be thought the breath Of discontent; or that these prayers be For weariness of life, not love of thee.”

— Ben Jonson

155. “Opinion is a light, vain, crude, and imperfect thing.”

— Ben Jonson

156. “Spread yourself upon his bosom publicly, whose heart you would eat in private.”

— Ben Jonson

157. “It is less dishonor to hear imperfectly than to speak imperfectly. The ears are excused; the understanding is not.”

— Ben Jonson

158. “Prevent your day at morning.”

— Ben Jonson

159. “A good man will avoid the spot of any sin. The very aspersion is grievous, which makes him choose his way in his life, as he would in his journey.”

— Ben Jonson

160. “It holds for good polity ever, to have that outwardly in vilest estimation, which inwardly is most dear to us.”

— Ben Jonson

161. “To men pressed by their wants all change is ever welcome.”

— Ben Jonson

162. “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.”

— Ben Jonson

163. “Whom hatred frights, let him not dream of sovereignty.”

— Ben Jonson

164. “Rich apparel has strange virtues; it makes him that hath it without means esteemed for an excellent wit; he that enjoys it with means puts the world in remembrance of his means.”

— Ben Jonson

165. “And where she went, the flowers took thickest root, As she had sow’d them with her odorous foot.”

— Ben Jonson

166. “The poet is the nearest borderer upon the orator.”

— Ben Jonson

167. “The day For whose returns, and many, all these pray; And so do I.”

— Ben Jonson

168. “For he that once is good, is ever great.”

— Ben Jonson

169. “Poets are far rarer birds than kings.”

— Ben Jonson

170. “I’ll give anything for a good copy now, be it true or false, so it be news.”

— Ben Jonson

171. “All discourses but my own afflict me; they seem harsh, impertinent, and irksome.”

— Ben Jonson

172. “I would rather have a plain down-right wisdom than a foolish and affected eloquence.”

— Ben Jonson

173. “True melancholy breeds your perfect fine wit.”

— Ben Jonson

174. “A prince without letters is a Pilot without eyes. All his government is groping.”

— Ben Jonson

175. “Fortune, thou hadst no deity, if men Had wisdom.”

— Ben Jonson

176. “One woman reads another’s character Without the tedious trouble of deciphering.”

— Ben Jonson

177. “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.”

— Ben Jonson

178. “Let argument bear no unmusical sound.”

— Ben Jonson

179. “Many punishments sometimes, and in some cases, as much discredit a prince as many funerals a physician.”

— Ben Jonson