Quote

For poetry, he's past his prime, He takes an hour to find a rhyme His fire is out, his wit decayed, His fancy sunk, his muse a jade. I'd have him throw away his pen, But there's no talking to some men.

Jonathan Swift

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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
Hours
Wit
Talking
Prime
Away
Fancy
Decayed
Past
Throw
Jade
Find
Hour
Sunk
Men
Poetry
Muse
Takes
Rhyme
Fire
Pens

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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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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Principally I hate and detest that animal called man although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.
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There's none so blind as they that won't see.
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Lose no time to contradict her, Nor endeavor to convict her Only take this rule along, Always to advise her wrong, And reprove her when she's right She may then grow wise for spite.
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The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk.
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Pray steal me not, I'm Mrs. Dingley's, Whose heart in this four-footed thing lies.
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Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.
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No man of honor, as the word is usually understood, did ever pretend that his honor obliged him to be chaste or temperate, to pay his creditors, to be useful to his country, to do good to mankind, to endeavor to be wise or learned, to regard his word, his promise, or his oath.
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This wine should be eaten, it is too good to be drunk.
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Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.
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If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.
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Love why do we one passion call, When 'tis a compound of them all? Where hot and cold, where sharp and sweet, In all their equipages meet Where pleasures mix'd with pains appear, Sorrow with joy, and hope with fear.
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He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
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Ah, a German and a genius ! A prodigy, admit him !
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Careful observers may foretell the hour (By sure prognostics) when to dread a show'r. While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more.
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The lack of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.
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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.
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I'll give you leave to call me anything, if you don't call me spade.
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For to enter the palace of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms, therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back-door
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Religion seems to have grown an infant with age, and requires miracles to nurse it, as it had in its infancy.
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