Jonathan Swift
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Jonathan Swift (November 30, 1667 - October 19, 1745) was an Irish writer and satirist. Swift is probably the foremost prose satirist in the English language, although he is also well known for his poetry and essays.
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- When I behold this I sighed, and said within myself, "Surely mortal man is a broomstick!" Nature sent him into the world strong and lusty, in a thriving condition, wearing his own hair on his head, the proper branches of this reasoning vegetable, till the axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs, and left him a withered trunk; he then flies to art, and puts on a periwig, valuing himself upon an unnatural bundle of hairs, all covered with powder, that never grew on his head; but now should this our broomstick pretend to enter the scene, proud of those birchen spoils it never bore, and all covered with dust, through the sweepings of the finest lady's chamber, we should be apt to ridicule and despise its vanity. Partial judges that we are of our own excellencies, and other men's defaults!
- Meditation on a Broomstick (1703-1710)
- Books, the children of the brain.
- A Tale of the Tub, Sec. 1 (1704)
- Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.
- The Battle of the Books, preface (1704)
- Instead of dirt and poison we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax; thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
- The Battle of the Books, preface (1704)
- Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
- A Critical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind (1707)
- There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.
- A Critical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind (1707)
- 'Tis very warm weather when one's in bed.
- Journal to Stella (November 8,1710)
- We are so fond of one another, because our ailments are the same.
- Journal to Stella (February 1, 1711)
- I love good creditable acquaintance; I love to be the worst of the company.
- Journal to Stella (May 17, 1711)
- 'Tis an old maxim in the schools,
That flattery's the food of fools;
Yet now and then your men of wit
Will condescend to take a bit.- Cadenus and Vanessa (1713)
- Proper words in proper places, make the true definition of a style.
- Letter to a Young Clergyman (January 9, 1720)
- If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.
- Letter to Miss Vanhomrigh (August 12, 1720)
- A set of phrases learnt by rote;
A passion for a scarlet coat;
When at a play to laugh, or cry,
Yet cannot tell the reason why:
Never to hold her tongue a minute;
While all she prates has nothing in it.- The Furniture of a Woman's Mind (1727)
- For conversation well endued;
She calls it witty to be rude;
And, placing raillery in railing,
Will tell aloud your greatest failing.- The Furniture of a Woman's Mind (1727)
- Those dreams that on the silent night intrude, and with false flitting shapes our minds delude ... are mere productions of the brain. And fools consult interpreters in vain.
- On Dreams (1727)
- I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.
- A Modest Proposal (1729)
- A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.
- A Modest Proposal (1729)
- Yet malice never was his aim;
He lashed the vice but spared the name.
No individual could resent,
Where thousands equally were meant.
His satire points at no defect
But what all mortals may correct;
For he abhorred that senseless tribe
Who call it humor when they gibe.- Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, l. 459 (1731)
- Hobbes clearly proves that every creature
Lives in a state of war by nature.- On Poetry: A Rhapsody (1733)
- So, naturalists observe, a flea
Hath smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bit 'em;
And so proceed ad infinitum.
Thus every poet, in his kind,
Is bit by him that comes behind.- On Poetry: A Rhapsody (1733)
- Conversation is but carving!
Give no more to every guest<brThan he's able to digest.
Give him always of the prime,
And but little at a time.
Carve to all but just enough,
Let them neither starve nor stuff,
And that you may have your due,
Let your neighbor carve for you.- Conversation
- Under an oak, in stormy weather,
I joined this rogue and whore together;
And none but he who rules the thunder
Can put this rogue and whore asunder.- Marriage Certificate. From the Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes, James Sutherland, ed. (1975), no. 77
- Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse.
- A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding (1754, published posthumously)
- Pride, ill nautre, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.
- A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding (1754, published posthumously)
- I can discover no political evil in suffering bullies, sharpers, and rakes, to rid the world of each other by a method of their own; where the law hath not been able to find an expedient.
- A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding (1754, published posthumously)
- Ubi saeva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit
- Translation: Where savage indignation can lacerate his heart no more.
- Epitaph. Inscribed on Swift's grave, St. Patrick's, Dublin.
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Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)
- We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
- Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
- Every man desires to live long, but no man would be old.
- A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.
- Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.
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Gulliver's Travels (1726)
- He (the Emperor) is taller by almost the breadth of my nail, than any of his court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into the beholders.
- Voyage to Lilliput, Ch. 2
- I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.
- Voyage to Brobdingnag, Ch. 6
- And he gave it for his opinion, that whosoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
- Voyage to Brobdingnag, Ch. 6
- He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers.
- Voyage to Laputa, Ch. 5
- I said the thing which was not. (For they have no word in their language to express lying or falsehood.)
- Voyage to Houyhnhnms
- I told him...that we ate when we were not hungry, and drank without the provocation of thirst.
- Voyage to Houyhnhnms, Ch. 6
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Polite Conversation (1738?)
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Dialogue 1
- The sight of you is good for sore eyes.
- 'Tis as cheap sitting as standing.
- I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world.
- I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.
- She's no chicken; she's on the wrong side of thirty, if she be a day.
- She wears her clothes, as if they were thrown on her with a pitchfork.
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Dialogue 2
- He was a bold man that first eat an oyster.
- That's as well said, as if I had said it myself.
- Fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
- She has more goodness in her little finger, than he has in his whole body.
- Lord, I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing!
- The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.
- May you live all the days of your life.
- I always love to begin a journey on Sundays, because I shall have the prayers of the church to preserve all thattravel by land, or water.
- I thought you and he were hand-in-glove.
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Dialogue 3
- She watches him, as a cat would watch a mouse.
- She pays him in his own coin.
- There was all the world and his wife.
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Attributed:
- A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying... that he is wiser today than yesterday.
- A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
- Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.
- Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping.
- As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
- As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.
- Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
- Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
- For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
- Fine words! I wonder where you stole them?
- Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.
- I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
- I've always believed no matter how many shots I miss, I'm going to make the next one.
- Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.
- It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.
- It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
- Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
- No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.
- Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.
- Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
- One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.
- One of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish had been left unsaid.
- Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.
- Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
- Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers because, whoever shares his thoughts with the public will convince them as he himself appears convinced.
- Pretense is the overrating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to.
- Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.
- So weak thou art that fools thy power despise; And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise.
- The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.
- The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.
- The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
- There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.
- There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
- Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together; Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.
- What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.
- When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
- Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
- Where there are large powers with little ambition... nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes.
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External links
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