They say princes learn no art truly, but the art of horsemanship. The reason is, the brave beast is no flatterer. He will throw a prince as soon as his groom.
Ben Jonson
Tag: Quote of the Day
10FEB2023 – Quote of the Day
Those that merely talk and never think,
That live in the wild anarchy of drink.
Opinion is a light, vain, crude, and imperfect thing.
A good life is a main argument.
Ben Jonson
09FEB2023 – Quote of the Day
Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup
And I’ll not look for wine.
Come my Celia, let us prove,
While we can, the sports of love;
Time will not be ours forever,
He at length our good will sever.
Spend not then his gifts in vain;
Suns that set may rise again,
But if once we lose this light,
‘Tis with us perpetual night.
Why should we defer our joys?
Fame and rumour are but toys.
Ben Jonson
08FEB2023 – Quote of the Day
So breaks the sun earth’s rugged chains,
Wherein rude winter bound her veins;
So grows both stream and source of price,
That lately fettered were with ice.
So naked trees get crispèd heads,
And coloured coats the roughest meads,
And all get vigour, youth and spright,
That are but looked on by his light.
Ben Jonson
07FEB2023 – Quote of the Day
Calumnies are answered best with silence.
Ben Jonson
06FEB2023 – Quote of the Day
Art hath an enemy call’d ignorance.
Ben Jonson
05FEB2023 – Quote of the Day
Seven hours to law, to soothing slumber seven,
Ten to the world allot, and all to heaven.
Sir William Jones
04FEB2023 – Quote of the Day
What constitutes a state?
Men who their duties know,
But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain.
And sovereign law, that state’s collected will,
O’er thrones and globes elate,
Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill.
Sir William Jones
03FEB2023 – Quote of the Day
On parent knees, a naked new-born child,
Weeping thou sat’st while all around thee smiled;
So live, that sinking in thy last long sleep,
Calm thou mayst smile, while all around thee weep.
Sir William Jones
02FEB2023 – Quote of the Day
This quote illustrates Jones’ discovery of the Indo-European family of languages.
The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists; there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family.
Sir William Jones