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In all distresses of our friends
We first consult our private ends;
While Nature, kindly bent to ease us,
Points out some circumstance to please us.
Topic: Adversity
Source: On the Death of Dr. Swift, a paraphrase of Rochefoucauld's "Maxim"
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And he gave it for his opinion, "that whoever could make two ears
of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground
where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and
do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of
politicians put together."
Topic: Agriculture
Source: Gulliver's Travels--Voyage to Brobdingnag (pt. II, ch. CII)
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Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping.
Topic: Ambition
Source: None
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She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on her with a
pitchfork.
Topic: Apparel
Source: Polite Conversation (dialogue I)
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How we apples swim.
Topic: Apples
Source: Brother Protestants
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There's none so blind as they that won't see.
Topic: Blind
Source: None
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There's none so blind as they that won't see.
Topic: Blindness
Source: Polite Conversation (dialogue III)
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Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
Topic: Censure
Source: None
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Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches to conceive how others can be in want.
Topic: Charity
Source: None
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A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.
Topic: Chastity
Source: Introductions to History of the Reformation (preface), by Bishop Burnet
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Complaint is the largest tribute Heaven receives.
Topic: Complaint
Source: None
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Faith, that's as well said as if I had said it myself.
Topic: Conceit
Source: Polite Conversation (dialogue II)
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I warrant you lay abed till the cows came home.
Topic: Cows
Source: Polite Conversation (dialogue II)
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Lord, Madame, I have fed like a farmer; I shall grow as fat as a
porpoise.
Topic: Eating
Source: Polite Conversation (dialogue II)
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They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
Topic: Eating
Source: Polite Conversation (dialogue II)
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Bread is the staff of life.
Topic: Eating
Source: Tale of a Tub
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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.
Topic: Echo
Source: An Echo
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'Tis an old maxim in the schools,
That flattery's the food of fools;
Yet now and then your men of wit
Will condescend to take a bit.
Topic: Flattery
Source: Cadenus and Vanessa (l. 769)
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Where Young must torture his invention
To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
Topic: Flattery
Source: Poetry, a Rhapsody (l. 279)
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So, naturalists observe, a flea
Has smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite 'em,
And so proceed ad infinitum.
Thus every poet in his kind
Is bit by him that comes behind.
Topic: Fleas
Source: Poetry--A Rhapsody
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When a true genius appears in this world you may know him by the sign that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
Topic: Genius
Source: None
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I heard the little bird say so.
Topic: Gossip
Source: Letter to Stella
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What some invent, the rest enlarge.
Topic: Gossip
Source: None
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For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
Topic: Government
Source: None
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They never would hear,
But turn the deaf ear,
As a matter they had no concern in.
Topic: Hearing
Source: Dingley and Brent
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The greatest inventions were produced in the times of ignorance, as the use of the compass, gunpowder, and printing.
Topic: History
Source: None
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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.
Topic: Invention
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.
Topic: Invention
Source: Gulliver's Travels (pt. III, ch. V, Voyage to Laputa)
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Hail, fellow, well met,
All dirty and wet:
Find out, if you can,
Who's master, who's man.
Topic: Investigation
Source: My Lady's Lamentation
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An old miser kept a tame jackdaw, that used to steal pieces of
money, and hide them in a hole, which a cat observing, asked,
"Why he would hoard up those round shining things that he could
make no use of?" "Why," said the jackdaw, "my master has a whole
chestfull, and makes no more use of them that I do."
Topic: Jackdaws
Source: Thoughts on Various Subjects
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A college joke to cure the dumps.
Topic: Jesting
Source: Cassinus and Peter
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Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies but which let wasps and hornets break through.
Topic: Law
Source: None
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Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want. -Jonathan Swift.
Topic: Limitations
Source: None
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Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
Topic: Men
Source: None
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As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
Topic: Men and Women
Source: None
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Modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
Topic: Modesty
Source: None
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Necessity is the mother of invention.
Topic: Necessity
Source: None
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Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers because, whoever shares his thoughts with the public will convince them as he himself appears convinced.
Topic: Optimism
Source: None
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He was a bold man that first eat an oyster.
Topic: Oysters
Source: Polite Conversation (dialogue II)
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Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they make us stronger for the time, leave us the weaker ever after.
Topic: Passion
Source: None
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Fine words! I wonder where you stole 'em.
[Lat., Libertas et natale solum.]
Topic: Plagiarism
Source: said about Chief Justice Whitshed's motto for his coach
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Walls have tongues, and hedges ears.
Topic: Proverbs
Source: Pastoral Dialogue (l. 7)
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Time stoops to no man's lure.
Topic: Proverbs
Source: Pastoral Dialogue (l. 7)
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A bad man becomes worse when he apes a saint.
Topic: Proverbs
Source: Pastoral Dialogue (l. 7)
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A favour is half granted, when graciously refused.
Topic: Proverbs
Source: Pastoral Dialogue (l. 7)
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A great fortune enslaves its owner.
Topic: Proverbs
Source: Pastoral Dialogue (l. 7)
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A kindness spontaneously offered to him who needs it, is doubly
gratifying.
Topic: Proverbs
Source: Pastoral Dialogue (l. 7)
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A loss, of which we are ignorant, is no loss.
Topic: Proverbs
Source: Pastoral Dialogue (l. 7)
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A man suffers death himself as often as he loses those dear to
him.
Topic: Proverbs
Source: Pastoral Dialogue (l. 7)
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A pleasant traveling companion helps us on our journey as much as
a carriage.
Topic: Proverbs
Source: Pastoral Dialogue (l. 7)
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