Quote

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

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
Little
Door
Ceremony
Great
Therefore
Expense
Much
Doors
Expenses
Men
Learning
Gates
Time
Inspirational
Enter
Palace
Form
Content
Gate
Littles
Requires
Palaces
Back
Forms
Haste

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

Image
Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
Jonathan Swift
Image
I never knew any man cured of inattention.
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
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.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers because, whoever shares his thoughts with the public will convince them as he himself appears convinced.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Story-telling is subject to two unavoidable defects,--frequent repetition and being soon exhausted so that, whoever values this gift in himself, has need of a good memory, and ought frequently to shift his company.
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
It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
Jonathan Swift
Image
The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company.
Jonathan Swift
Image
For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
Jonathan Swift
Image
One principal object of good-breeding is to suit our behaviour to the three several degrees of men, our superiors, our equals, and those below us.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Come, agree, the law's costly.
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
No preacher is listened to but time, which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have in vain tried to put into our heads before.
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
Faith, that's as well said as if I had said it myself.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.
Jonathan Swift
Image
In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man uncapable of holding any public station for, since kings avow themselves to be the deputies of Providence.
Jonathan Swift