Quote

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.

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
Guilt
Shame
Wonder
Literature
Evil
Often
Never
Wicked
Men
Ashamed

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

Image
Do you think I was born in a wood to be afraid of an owl?
Jonathan Swift
Image
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.
Jonathan Swift
Image
111 company is like a dog, who dirts those most whom he loves best.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Sweeping from butcher's stalls, dung, guts, and blood, Drown'd puppies, stinking sprats, all drench'd in mud, Dead cats, and turnip-tops, come tumbling down the flood.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Daphne knows, with equal ease, How to vex and how to please But the folly of her sex Makes her sole delight to vex.
Jonathan Swift
Image
All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor it is like spending this year part of the next year's revenue.
Jonathan Swift
Image
It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next. Future ages shall talk of this they shall be famous to all posterity whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Though Diogenes lived in a tub, there might be, for aught I know, as much pride under his rags, as in the fine-spun garments of the divine Plato.
Jonathan Swift
Image
The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
Jonathan Swift
Image
But you think that it is time for me to have done with the world, and so I would if I could get into a better before I was called into the best, and not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.
Jonathan Swift
Image
... the atheists, libertines, despisers of religion ... that is to say all those who usually pass under the name of Free-thinkers.
Jonathan Swift
Image
hoever wishes to win in this game must have patience and money, since the values are so little constant and the rumors so little founded on truth Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.
Jonathan Swift
Image
It is the first rule in oratory that a man must appear such as he would persuade others to be: and that can be accomplished only by the force of his life.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.
Jonathan Swift
Image
I shall be like that tree-I shall die at the top.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Two women seldom grow intimate but at the expense of a third person.
Jonathan Swift
Image
How often do we contradict the right rules of reason in the whole course of our lives! Reason itself is true and just, but the reason of every particular man is weak and wavering, perpetually swayed and turned by his interests, his passions, and his vices.
Jonathan Swift
Image
I am convinced that if the virtuosi could once find out a world in the moon, with a passage to it, our women would wear nothing but what directly came from thence.
Jonathan Swift
Image
For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labor, and search, and ranging through every corner of nature the difference is that 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.
Jonathan Swift
Image
What poet would not grieve to see His brother write as well as he? But rather than they should excel, He'd wish his rivals all in Hell.
Jonathan Swift