82 Famous Quotes by Jonathan Swift
11/30/1667 - 10/19/1745
Also Known As:
Dean Swift
M.B. Drapier
Lemuel Gulliver
Professions:
Information:
About Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer, poet and cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.
He is remembered for works such as Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, Drapier's Letters, The Battle of the Books, An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, and A Tale of a Tub. Swift is probably the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. Swift originally published all of his works under pseudonyms – such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, MB Drapier – or anonymously. He is also known for being a master of two styles of satire: the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.
Fine words! I wonder where you stole 'em.
[Lat., Libertas et natale solum.]
Plagiarism
Quotes, by Jonathan Swift , Source: said about Chief Justice Whitshed's motto for his coach
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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.
Sweetness
Quotes, by Jonathan Swift , Source: Battle of the Books, fable on the merits of the bee (the ancients) and the spider (the moderns)
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Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally
discover everybody's face but their own.
Satire
Quotes, by Jonathan Swift , Source: The Battle of the Books
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Where Young must torture his invention
To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
Flattery
Quotes, by Jonathan Swift , Source: Poetry, a Rhapsody (l. 279)
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The tucked-up sempstress walks hasty strides,
While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides.
Umbrellas
Quotes, by Jonathan Swift , Source: Description of a City Shower
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They never would hear,
But turn the deaf ear,
As a matter they had no concern in.
Hearing
Quotes, by Jonathan Swift , Source: Dingley and Brent
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Never sleeping, still awake,
Pleasing most when most I speak;
The delight of old and young,
Though I speak without a tongue.
Nought but one thing can confound me,
Many voices joining round me,
Then I fret, and rave, and gabble,
Like the labourers of Babel.
Echo
Quotes, by Jonathan Swift , Source: An Echo
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If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would
not have given them to such a scoundrel.
Wealth
Quotes, by Jonathan Swift , Source: Letter to Miss Vanhomrigh
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He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams
out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically
sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers.
Invention
Quotes, by Jonathan Swift , Source: Gulliver's Travels (pt. III, ch. V, Voyage to Laputa)
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Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking
what nobody else has thought.
Invention
Quotes, by Jonathan Swift , Source: Gulliver's Travels (pt. III, ch. V, Voyage to Laputa)
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I've often wished that I had clear,
For life, six hundred pounds a year,
A handsome house to lodge a friend,
A river at my garden's end,
A terrace walk, and half a rood
Of land, set out to plant a wood.
Wishes
Quotes, by Jonathan Swift , Source: Imitation of Horace (bk. II, satire 6)
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A prince, the moment he is crown'd,
Inherits every virtue sound,
As emblems of the sovereign power,
Like other baubles in the Tower:
Is generous, valiant, just, and wise,
And so continues till he dies.
Royalty
Quotes, by Jonathan Swift , Source: On Poetry (l. 191)
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The rolling fictions grow in strength and size,
Each author adding to the former lies.
Rumor
Quotes, by Jonathan Swift , Source: Tr. of Ovid--Examiner (no. 15)
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Lord, Madame, I have fed like a farmer; I shall grow as fat as a
porpoise.
Eating
Quotes, by Jonathan Swift , Source: Polite Conversation (dialogue II)
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I know Sir John will go, though he was sure it would rain cats
and dogs.
Rain
Quotes, by Jonathan Swift , Source: Polite Conversation (dialogue II)
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The greatest inventions were produced in the times of ignorance, as the use of the compass, gunpowder, and printing.
History
Quotes, by Jonathan Swift
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