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
fashion velvet lexicon
Silks, velvets, calicoes, and the whole lexicon of female fopperies.
wall real reflection
Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them; as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like a face on the wall or the wainscot can, by two or three touches with a lead pencil, make it look visible, and agreeing with what he fancied.
flower amusement corn
Rhetoric in serious discourses is like the flowers in corn; pleasing to those who come only for amusement, but prejudicial to him who would reap profit from it.
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.
weight reason idle
An idle reason lessens the weight of the good ones you gave before.
book men return
Books, like men their authors, have no more than one wayofcoming intothe world, but there areten thousand to go out of it, and return no more.
funny inspiration being-in-love
I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
drama men play
Men of wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.
ignorance gunpowder use
The greatest Inventions were produced in Times of Ignorance; as the Use of the Compass, Gunpowder, and Printing; and by the dullest Nation, as the Germans.
people bird fruit
The worthiest people are the most injured by slander, as is the best fruit which the birds have been pecking at.
ems fleas mathematics
So, naturalists observe, a flea; Hath smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum.
country freedom law
By the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your country you are and ought to be as free a people as your brethren in England.
two light culture
The two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
thinking flying aviation
The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.