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
weed mind fields
It is not so much the being exempt from faults as the having overcome them that is an advantage to us; it being with the follies of the mind as with weeds of a field, which if destroyed and consumed upon the place where they grow, enrich and improve it more than if none had ever sprung there.
fate wind should
Though fear should lend him pinions like the wind, yet swifter fate will seize him from behind.
passion men wavering
How often do we contradict the right rules of reason in the whole course of our lives! Reason itself is true and just, but the reason of every particular man is weak and wavering, perpetually swayed and turned by his interests, his passions, and his vices.
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.
art oratory public-speaking
In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.
war differences long
Neither are any wars so furious and bloody, or of so long continuance as those occasioned by difference in opinion, especially if it be in things indifferent.
wise people solitude
Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone.
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.