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
light reason riders
Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.
men evil guilt
I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
men vicious grows
Men always grow vicious before they become unbelievers.
inspirational children book
Books, the children of the brain.
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.
men may fool
Modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
character profound sublime
There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof, I hope, there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am not understood, it shall be concluded, that something very useful and profound is couched underneath; and again, that whatever word or sentence is printed in a different character, shall be judged to contain something extraordinary either or wit of sublime.