Quote

Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.

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
Literature
Understanding
Couched
Something
Concluded
Underneath
Useful
Profound
Understood
Shall

More quotes by 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
We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
Jonathan Swift
Image
That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
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
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.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Bread is the staff of life.
Jonathan Swift
Image
He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
Jonathan Swift
Image
A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious and low.
Jonathan Swift
Image
My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
Jonathan Swift
Image
The system of morality to be gathered from the ancient sages falls very short of that delivered in the gospel.
Jonathan Swift
Image
For, if we take an examination of what is generally understood by happiness, as it has respect either to the understanding or the senses, we shall find all its properties and adjuncts will herd under this short definition: that it is a perpetual possession of being well deceived.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Come, agree, the law's costly.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Hail fellow, well met.
Jonathan Swift
Image
A wise man will find us to be rogues by our faces.
Jonathan Swift
Image
I row after health like a waterman.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Cruel people are ever cowards in emergency.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Fond of those hives where folly reigns, And cards and scandal are the chains, Where the pert virgin slights a name, And scorns to redden into shame.
Jonathan Swift
Image
There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
Jonathan Swift