Quote

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.

Jonathan Swift

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jonathan Swift
Age: 77 †
Born: 1667
Born: November 30
Died: 1745
Died: October 19
Essayist
Human Rights Activist
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Pamphleteer
Philosopher
Poet
Priest
Prosaist
Public Figure
Dublin city
Isaac Bickerstaff
M. B. Drapier
Lemuel Gulliver
Simon Wagstaff
Best
Manners
Good
Room
People
Rooms
Fewest
Literature
Converse
Making
Converses
Easy
Bred
Makes
Uneasy
Art
Whoever

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

Image
Unjustly poets we asperse: Truth shines the brighter clad in verse, And all the fictions they pursue Do but insinuate what is true.
Jonathan Swift
Image
It is a maxim, that those, to whom everybody allows the second place, have an undoubted title to the first.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Men who possess all the advantages of life are in a state where there are many accidents to disorder and discompose, but few to please them.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Ever eating, never cloying, All-devouring, all-destroying Never finding full repast, Till I eat the world at last.
Jonathan Swift
Image
So, naturalists observe, a flea Hath smaller fleas that on him prey And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Come hither, all ye empty things, Ye bubbles rais'd by breath of Kings Who float upon the tide of state, Come hither, and behold your fate. Let pride be taught by this rebuke, How very mean a thing's a Duke From all his ill-got honours flung, Turn'd to that dirt from whence he sprung.
Jonathan Swift
Image
A forward critic often dupes us With sham quotations peri hupsos, And if we have not read Longinus, Will magisterially outshine us. Then, lest with Greek he over-run ye, Procure the book for love or money, Translated from Boileau's translation, And quote quotation on quotation.
Jonathan Swift
Image
My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
Jonathan Swift
Image
What they do in heaven we are ignorant of what they do not do we are told expressly.
Jonathan Swift
Image
If you were not reasoned into your beliefs, you cannot be reasoned out of them.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Let a man be ne'er so wise, he may be caught with sober lies.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
Jonathan Swift
Image
When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the good side or circumstances of it when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad ones.
Jonathan Swift
Image
There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
Jonathan Swift
Image
The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
Jonathan Swift
Image
A college joke to cure the dumps.
Jonathan Swift
Image
I'm up and down and round about, Yet all the world can't find me out Though hundreds have employed their leisure, They never yet could find my measure.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Possession, they say, is eleven points of the law.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
Jonathan Swift