Do but ask of Nature why all living
creatures are less delighted with meat and drink that sustains them than
with venery that wastes them?
creatures are less delighted with meat and drink that sustains them than
with venery that wastes them?
Ben Jonson - Discoveries Made Upon Men, and Some Poems
It imitates the public riot.
The
excess of feasts and apparel are the notes of a sick state, and the
wantonness of language of a sick mind.
_De rebus mundanis_. --If we would consider what our affairs are indeed,
not what they are called, we should find more evils belonging to us than
happen to us. How often doth that which was called a calamity prove the
beginning and cause of a man's happiness? and, on the contrary, that
which happened or came to another with great gratulation and applause,
how it hath lifted him but a step higher to his ruin? as if he stood
before where he might fall safely.
_Vulgi mores_. --_Morbus comitialis_. --The vulgar are commonly ill-natured,
and always grudging against their governors: which makes that a prince
has more business and trouble with them than ever Hercules had with the
bull or any other beast; by how much they have more heads than will be
reined with one bridle. There was not that variety of beasts in the ark,
as is of beastly natures in the multitude; especially when they come to
that iniquity to censure their sovereign's actions. Then all the
counsels are made good or bad by the events; and it falleth out that the
same facts receive from them the names, now of diligence, now of vanity,
now of majesty, now of fury; where they ought wholly to hang on his
mouth, as he to consist of himself, and not others' counsels.
_Princeps_. --After God, nothing is to be loved of man like the prince; he
violates Nature that doth it not with his whole heart. For when he hath
put on the care of the public good and common safety, I am a wretch, and
put off man, if I do not reverence and honour him, in whose charge all
things divine and human are placed.
Do but ask of Nature why all living
creatures are less delighted with meat and drink that sustains them than
with venery that wastes them? and she will tell thee, the first respects
but a private, the other a common good, propagation.
_De eodem_. --_Orpheus' Hymn_. --He is the arbiter of life and death: when he
finds no other subject for his mercy, he should spare himself. All his
punishments are rather to correct than to destroy. Why are prayers with
Orpheus said to be the daughters of Jupiter, but that princes are thereby
admonished that the petitions of the wretched ought to have more weight
with them than the laws themselves.
_De opt. Rege Jacobo_. --It was a great accumulation to His Majesty's
deserved praise that men might openly visit and pity those whom his
greatest prisons had at any time received or his laws condemned.
_De Princ. adjunctis_. --_Sed vere prudens haud concipi possit Princeps_,
_nisi simul et bonus_. --_Lycurgus_. --_Sylla_. --_Lysander_.
excess of feasts and apparel are the notes of a sick state, and the
wantonness of language of a sick mind.
_De rebus mundanis_. --If we would consider what our affairs are indeed,
not what they are called, we should find more evils belonging to us than
happen to us. How often doth that which was called a calamity prove the
beginning and cause of a man's happiness? and, on the contrary, that
which happened or came to another with great gratulation and applause,
how it hath lifted him but a step higher to his ruin? as if he stood
before where he might fall safely.
_Vulgi mores_. --_Morbus comitialis_. --The vulgar are commonly ill-natured,
and always grudging against their governors: which makes that a prince
has more business and trouble with them than ever Hercules had with the
bull or any other beast; by how much they have more heads than will be
reined with one bridle. There was not that variety of beasts in the ark,
as is of beastly natures in the multitude; especially when they come to
that iniquity to censure their sovereign's actions. Then all the
counsels are made good or bad by the events; and it falleth out that the
same facts receive from them the names, now of diligence, now of vanity,
now of majesty, now of fury; where they ought wholly to hang on his
mouth, as he to consist of himself, and not others' counsels.
_Princeps_. --After God, nothing is to be loved of man like the prince; he
violates Nature that doth it not with his whole heart. For when he hath
put on the care of the public good and common safety, I am a wretch, and
put off man, if I do not reverence and honour him, in whose charge all
things divine and human are placed.
Do but ask of Nature why all living
creatures are less delighted with meat and drink that sustains them than
with venery that wastes them? and she will tell thee, the first respects
but a private, the other a common good, propagation.
_De eodem_. --_Orpheus' Hymn_. --He is the arbiter of life and death: when he
finds no other subject for his mercy, he should spare himself. All his
punishments are rather to correct than to destroy. Why are prayers with
Orpheus said to be the daughters of Jupiter, but that princes are thereby
admonished that the petitions of the wretched ought to have more weight
with them than the laws themselves.
_De opt. Rege Jacobo_. --It was a great accumulation to His Majesty's
deserved praise that men might openly visit and pity those whom his
greatest prisons had at any time received or his laws condemned.
_De Princ. adjunctis_. --_Sed vere prudens haud concipi possit Princeps_,
_nisi simul et bonus_. --_Lycurgus_. --_Sylla_. --_Lysander_.
