"Ah, a German and a genius ! A prodigy, admit him !"
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Quote collection
Jonathan Swift quotes (page 18 of 22)
433 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Strange an astrologer should die, without one wonder in the sky."
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"Life is a tragedy wherein we sit as spectators for a while and then act our part in it."
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"The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little."
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"My horses understand me tolerably well; I converse with them at least four hours every day. They are strangers to bridle or saddle; they live in great amity with me, and friendship of each other."
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"I've often wish'd 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."
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"They have likewise discovered two lesser stars, or satellites, which revolve around Mars, whereof the innermost is distant from the center of the primary exactly three of his diameters, and the outermost five: the former revolves in the space of ten hours, and the latter in twenty-one and a half, so that the squares of their periodical times are very near in the same proportion with the cubes of their distances from the center of Mars; which evidently shows them to be governed by the same Law of Gravitation that influences the other heavenly bodies."
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"It is likewise to be observed that this society hath a peculiar chant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply."
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"Come, agree, the law's costly."
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"A secret is seldom safe in more than one breast."
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"Who can deny that all men are violent lovers of the truth, when we see them so positive in their errors, which they will maintain out of their zeal for truth, although they contradict themselves every day of their lives."
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"It is a maxim, that those, to whom everybody allows the second place, have an undoubted title to the first."
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"If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning etc., beginning from his youth, and so go to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last."
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"When you set about your composing, it may be necessary for your ease, and better distillation of wit, to put on your worst clothes, and the worse the better; for an author, like a limbeck, will yield the better for having a rag about him: besides that, I have observed a gardener cut the outward rind of a tree (which is the surtout of it) to make it bear well; and this is a natural account of the usual poverty of poets, and is an argument why wits, of all men living, ought to be ill clad."
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"T is as cheap sitting as standing."
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"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."
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"O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee, whose graceless children scorn to own thee! . Yet thou hast greater cause to be ashamed of them, than they of thee."
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"And, is not Virtue in Mankind The Nutriment that feeds the Mind?"
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"The example alone of a vicious prince will corrupt an age; but that of a good one will not reform it."
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"Everybody wants to live forever, but nobody wants to grow old."
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