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
circles world down-and
I'm up and down and round about, Yet all the world can't find me out; Though hundreds have employed their leisure, They never yet could find my measure.
hail mets wells
Hail fellow, well met.
glasses light imagination
Abstracts, abridgments, summaries, etc., have the same use with burning-glasses,--to collect the diffused light rays of wit and learning in authors, and make them point with warmth and quickness upon the reader's imagination.
names giving spades
I'll give you leave to call me anything, if you don't call me spade.
opinion quotations
Quotations are best brought in to confirm some opinion controverted.
sky astrology strange
Strange an astrologer should die, without one wonder in the sky.
men attention inattention
I never knew any man cured of inattention.
book omission authorship
Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation td posterity? Let him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments.
bible running writing
The translators of the Bible were masters of an English style much fitter for that work than any we see in our present writings; the which is owing to the simplicity that runs through the whole.
language corruption introducing
The affectation of some late authors to introduce and multiply cant words is the most ruinous corruption in any language.
air age peculiar
In all assemblies, though you wedge them ever so close, we may observe this peculiar property, that over their heads there is room enough; but how to reach it is the difficult point. To this end the philosopher's way in all ages has been by erecting certain edifices in the air.
revenge men practice
There are but three ways for a man to revenge himself of the censure of the world,--to despise it, to return the like, or to endeavor to live so as to avoid it; the first of these is usually pretended, the last is almost impossible, the universal practice is for the second.
wise philosophy men
Such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up.
shining fiction poet
Unjustly poets we asperse: Truth shines the brighter clad in verse, And all the fictions they pursue Do but insinuate what is true.