Quote

What they do in heaven we are ignorant of what they do not do we are told expressly.

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
Expressly
Ignorant
Told
Literature
Heaven

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

Image
I can discover no political evil in suffering bullies, sharpers, and rakes, to rid the world of each other by a method of their own where the law hath not been able to find an expedient.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Just get the right syllable in the proper place.
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
For though, in nature, depth and height Are equally held infinite: In poetry, the height we know 'Tis only infinite below.
Jonathan Swift
Image
A college joke to cure the dumps.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like a face on the wall or the wainscot can, by two or three touches with a lead pencil, make it look visible, and agreeing with what he fancied.
Jonathan Swift
Image
It often happens that, if a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done its work, and there is no further occasion for it.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
Jonathan Swift
Image
A jargon form'd from the lost language, wit, Confounded in that Babel of the pit Form'd by diseased conceptions, weak and wild, Sick lust of souls, and an abortive child Born between whores and fops, by lewd compacts, Before the play, or else between the acts Nor wonder, if from such polluted minds Should spring such short and transitory kinds.
Jonathan Swift
Image
I am of the level with common Astrologers who, with an old paltry cant, and a few pot-hooks for planets to amuse the vulgar, have too long been suffered to abuse the world.
Jonathan Swift
Image
I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world.
Jonathan Swift
Image
In men desire begets love, and in women love begets desire.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company.
Jonathan Swift
Image
The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk.
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
The two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Many a truth is told in jest.
Jonathan Swift
Image
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.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Some dire misfortune to portend, no enemy can match a friend.
Jonathan Swift
Image
My Lawyer being practiced almost from his Cradle in defending Falsehood is quite out of his Element when he would be an Advocate for Justice, which as an Office unnatural, he always attempts with great Awkwardness if not with Ill-will.
Jonathan Swift