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
There is no greater hell than to be a prisoner of fear.
No man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.
True happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in the worth and choice.
To speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.
Such sweet neglect more taketh me, / Than all the adulteries of art; / They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.
It is not growing like a tree / In bulk, doth make men better be.
Lady, it is to be presumed, / Though art's hid causes are not found, / All is not sweet, all is not sound.
Have you a stool there to be melancholy upon?
Underneath this stone doth lie / As much beauty as could die.
Have you seen but a bright lily grow, / Before rude hands have touched it? / Have you marked but the fall o' the snow / Before the soil hath smutched it? . . . O so white! O so soft! O so sweet is she!
Wherein the graver had a strife / With Nature to out-do the life.
Thy praise or dispraise is to me alike; One doth not stroke me, nor the other strike.
Heaven prepares good men with crosses; but no ill can happen to a good man.
And though thou hadst small Latin, and less Greek.