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
heaven ignorant
What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.
men providing another-time
Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.
moon advice forget
I forget whether advice be among the lost things which Ariosto says are to be found in the moon: that and time ought to have been there.
men self inquiry
The motives of the best actions will not bear too strict an inquiry. It is allowed that the cause of most actions, good or bad, may be resolved into the love of ourselves; but the self-love of some men inclines them to please others, and the self-love of others is wholly employed in pleasing themselves. This makes the great distinction between virtue and vice.
fall sage morality
The system of morality to be gathered from the ancient sages falls very short of that delivered in the gospel.
kings age reform
The example alone of a vicious prince will corrupt an age; but that of a good one will not reform it.
men ungrateful veils
He that calls a man ungrateful sums up all the veil that a man can be guilty of.
men behaviour suits
One principal object of good-breeding is to suit our behaviour to the three several degrees of men, our superiors, our equals, and those below us.
men age genius
There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them.
two age might
Every age might perhaps produce one or two geniuses, if they were not sunk under the censure and obloquy of plodding, servile, imitating pedants.
flattery manners ill
Nothing is so great an instance of ill-manners as flattery.
wise lying men
Let a man be ne'er so wise, he may be caught with sober lies.
faith law world
A maxim in law has more weight in the world than an article of faith.
romance littles ingredients
A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious and low.