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
names cards reign
Fond of those hives where folly reigns, And cards and scandal are the chains, Where the pert virgin slights a name, And scorns to redden into shame.
science feet oxen
Old sciences are unraveled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot.
moon dancing shining
I with borrow'd silver shine, What you see is none of mine. First I show you but a quarter, Like the bow that guards the Tartar: Then the half, and then the whole, Ever dancing round the pole.
fool defects
Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters.
lasts these-days live-every-day
Live every day as your last, because one of these days, it will be.
onions should
Your onions should be thoroughly boiled.
men company persons
Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company.
christian spiritual men
When a man is made a spiritual peer he loses his surname; when a temporal, his Christian name.
taken aeneas giving
Whatever the poets pretend, it is plain they give immortality to none but themselves; it is Homer and Virgil we reverence and admire, not Achilles or Aeneas. With historians it is quite the contrary; our thoughts are taken up with the actions, persons, and events we read, and we little regard the authors.
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.
christian suffering-of-others bears
It is remarkable with what Christian fortitude and resignation we can bear the suffering of other folks.
sitting standing
T is as cheap sitting as standing.
wine judging temptation
Arbitrary power is the natural object of temptation to a prince, as wine and women to a young fellow, or a bribe to a judge, or avarice to old age...
hunger clock
My hunger serves me instead of a clock.