Life & Wisdom Quote by Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson’s line is a small manifesto against being dazzled by language - a warning from a poet who knew exactly how seductive language can be. “Weigh the meaning” makes interpretation feel like a moral task, not a parlor game. It’s not “notice” or “consider” but “weigh”: measurement, gravity, accountability. Jonson is telling you that good reading is closer to judgment than to admiration.

The kicker is the second clause: “look not at the words.” Coming from a craftsman of words, that’s deliberate provocation. He isn’t dismissing style; he’s exposing how easily style becomes an alibi. In Jonson’s world - a Jacobean culture of court performance, pamphlet wars, and rhetorical one-upmanship - verbal sparkle could purchase credibility it didn’t deserve. The subtext is suspicion: eloquence is not evidence.

The intent also reads as a rebuke to a certain kind of audience. Jonson famously fought for standards, for labor, for art that could withstand scrutiny rather than win a room in the moment. This line disciplines the reader to resist surface pleasures: puns, ornament, bravado, even the charisma of a speaker. It pushes toward paraphrase, toward the hard question: if you strip away the verbal costume, what claim remains?

It’s a surprisingly modern instruction for an era of soundbites and branding. Jonson anticipates the central problem of public speech: words can be engineered to feel true. Meaning has to be tested.