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Calumnies are answered best with silence.

— Ben Jonson Volpone (1606)

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Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: Volpone (1606), Act II, scene ii
Work: Volpone, 1606
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

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Get money; still get money, boy,
No matter by what means.

Every Man in His Humour (1598)

Have paid scot and lot there any time this eighteen years.

Every Man in His Humour (1598)

Bad men excuse their faults, good men will leave them.

The dignity of truth is lost
With much protesting.

Catiline His Conspiracy (1611)

Still to be neat, still to be drest,
As you were going to a feast.

Where it concerns himself,
Who's angry at a slander makes it true.

Catiline His Conspiracy (1611)

The Devil is an Ass, I do acknowledge it.

The Devil Is an Ass (1616)

Thy praise or dispraise is to me alike;
One doth not stroke me, nor the other strike.

The Works of Ben Jonson, First Folio (1616)

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Topics

Silence

More quotes by Ben Jonson

The world knows only two, — that's Rome and I.

Sejanus (1603)

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.

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There's reason good, that you good laws should make:
Men's manners ne'er were viler, for your sake.

The Works of Ben Jonson, First Folio (1616)

Neither do thou lust after that tawney weed tobacco.

True happiness
Consists not in the multitude of friends,
But in the worth and choice.

Cynthia's Revels (1600)

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To sin by silence, when we should protest,
Makes cowards out of men.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox New Thought Pastels (1913)

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.

George Eliot

There are times when good words are to be left unsaid out of esteem for silence.

Benedict of Nursia

I think television has betrayed the meaning of democratic speech, adding visual chaos to the confusion of voices. What role does silence have in all this noise?

Federico Fellini I'm a Born Liar (2003)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ben Jonson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.