Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swiftwas an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer, poet and cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth30 November 1667
CountryIreland
ill-will justice office
My Lawyer being practiced almost from his Cradle in defending Falsehood; is quite out of his Element when he would be an Advocate for Justice, which as an Office unnatural, he always attempts with great Awkwardness if not with Ill-will.
happiness men perfect
So endless and exorbitant are the desires of men that they will grasp at all, and can form no scheme of perfect happiness with less.
greatness painful neighbor
Great abilities, when employed as God directs, do but make the owners of them greater and more painful servants to their neighbors.
hands government may
It may pass for a maxim in State, that the administration cannot be placed in too few hands, nor the legislature in too many.
ambition government sacred
Hereditary right should be kept sacred, not from any inalienable right in a particular family, but to avoid the consequences that usually attend the ambition of competitors.
friends enemy misfortunes
Some dire misfortune to portend, no enemy can match a friend.
fool defects
Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters.
weed mind fields
It is not so much the being exempt from faults as the having overcome them that is an advantage to us; it being with the follies of the mind as with weeds of a field, which if destroyed and consumed upon the place where they grow, enrich and improve it more than if none had ever sprung there.
fate wind should
Though fear should lend him pinions like the wind, yet swifter fate will seize him from behind.
christian suffering-of-others bears
It is remarkable with what Christian fortitude and resignation we can bear the suffering of other folks.
degrees bulls mouths
What we call the Irish Brogue is no sooner discovered, than it makes the deliverer, in the last degree, ridiculous and despised; and, from such a mouth, an Englishman expects nothing but bulls, blunders, and follies.
moon world passages
I am convinced that if the virtuosi could once find out a world in the moon, with a passage to it, our women would wear nothing but what directly came from thence.
forever might tongue
An English tongue, if refined to a certain standard, might perhaps be fixed forever.
pride men knowing
Pride, ill nature, and want of sense are the three great sources of ill manners; without some one of these defects, no man will behave himself ill for want of experience, or what, in the language of fools, is called knowing the world.