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
True gladness doth not always speak; joy, bred and born but in the tongue, is weak.
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.
Nor shall our cups make any guilty men; But at our parting, we will be, as when We innocently met.
How Fortune piles her sports when she begins to practise them!
My thoughts and I were of another world.
It is a note Of upstart greatness to observe and watch For these poor trifles, which the noble mind Neglects and scorns.
Chance will not do the work. Chance sends the breeze; But if the pilot slumber at the helm, The very wind that wafts us tow'rds the port May dash us on the shoals. The steersman's part Is vigilance, or blow it rough or smooth.
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat.
To men pressed by their wants all change is ever welcome.
Weigh the meaning and look not at the words.
It is as great a spite to be praised in the wrong place, and by a wrong person, as can be done to a noble nature.
No man is so foolish but may give another good counsel sometimes; and no man is so wise, but may easily err, if he will take no others counsel but his own. But very few men are wise by their own counsel; or learned by their own teaching. For he that was only taught by himself had a fool to his master.
God wisheth none should wreck on a strange shelf: To him man's dearer than to himself.
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.