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
people teeth weight
Whence proceeds this weight we lay On what detracting people say? Their utmost malice cannot make Your head, or tooth, or finger ache; Nor spoil your shapes, distort your face, Or put one feature out of place.
wise book reading
When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.
men age genius
There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them.
people madness fit
Orators inflame the people, whose anger is really but a short fit of madness.
men pay literature
Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
men age criticism
If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.
men mind example
A traveler's chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad-as well as good example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.
men house quality
I have known some men possessed of good qualities which were very serviceable to others, but useless to themselves; like a sun-dial on the front of a house, to inform the neighbours and passengers, but not the owner within.
real vision invisible
Real vision is the ability to see the invisible.
wisdom pain hunting
Wisdom is a fox who, after long hunting, will at last cost you the pains to dig out; it is a cheese, which, by how much the richer, has the thicker, the homlier, and the coarser coat; and whereof to a judicious palate, the maggots are best. It is a sack posset, wherein the deeper you go, you'll find it the sweeter. Wisdom is a hen, whose cackling we must value and consider, because it is attended with an egg. But lastly, it is a nut, which, unless you choose with judgment, may cost you a tooth, and pay you with nothing but a worm.
age might debate
Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age.
art nature lying
This single Stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected Corner, I once knew in a flourishing State in a Forest: It was full of Sap, full of Leaves, and full of Boughs: But now, in vain does the busy Art of Man pretend to vie with Nature, by tying that withered Bundle of Twigs to its sapless Trunk: It is at best but the Reverse of what it was; a Tree turned upside down, the Branches on the Earth, and the Root in the Air.
men shining company
Few are qualified to shine in company, but it is in most men's power to be agreeable.
love book passion
A ridiculous passion which hath no being but in play-books and romances.