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
money men every-man
No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore, money is better than counsel.
friendship not-friends difficult
When we are old, our friends find it difficult to please us, and are less concerned whether we be pleased or not.
women two intimate
Two women seldom grow intimate but at the expense of a third person.
character support done
Perpetual aiming at wit is a very bad part of conversation. It is done to support a character: it generally fails; it is a sort of insult on the company, and a restraint upon the speaker.
age succeed imagine
I cannot imagine why we should be at the expense to furnish wit for succeeding ages, when the former have made no sort of provision for ours.
vanity temptation natural
Vanity is a natural object of temptation to a woman.
perfection simplicity style
Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.
forever might tongue
An English tongue, if refined to a certain standard, might perhaps be fixed forever.
wise country men
No man of honor, as the word is usually understood, did ever pretend that his honor obliged him to be chaste or temperate, to pay his creditors, to be useful to his country, to do good to mankind, to endeavor to be wise or learned, to regard his word, his promise, or his oath.
happiness men perfect
So endless and exorbitant are the desires of men that they will grasp at all, and can form no scheme of perfect happiness with less.
greatness painful neighbor
Great abilities, when employed as God directs, do but make the owners of them greater and more painful servants to their neighbors.
men hands abuse
When any one person or body of men seize into their hands the power in the last resort, there is properly no longer a government, but what Aristotle and his followers call the abuse and corruption of one.
hands government may
It may pass for a maxim in State, that the administration cannot be placed in too few hands, nor the legislature in too many.
ambition government sacred
Hereditary right should be kept sacred, not from any inalienable right in a particular family, but to avoid the consequences that usually attend the ambition of competitors.