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A ridiculous passion which hath no being but in play-books and romances.
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
Romance
Ridiculous
Books
Passion
Book
Play
Love
Romances
Hath
More quotes by Jonathan Swift
I would rather be a freeman among slaves than a slave among freemen.
Jonathan Swift
The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word.
Jonathan Swift
This made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavor to do himself honor among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him.
Jonathan Swift
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
There's none so blind as they that won't see.
Jonathan Swift
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
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
I cannot imagine why we should be at the expense to furnish wit for succeeding ages, when the former have made no sort of provision for ours.
Jonathan Swift
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.
Jonathan Swift
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
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
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
The system of morality to be gathered from the ancient sages falls very short of that delivered in the gospel.
Jonathan Swift
Religion seems to have grown an infant with age, and requires miracles to nurse it, as it had in its infancy.
Jonathan Swift
Pedantry is properly the over-rating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to.
Jonathan Swift
Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
Jonathan Swift
There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them.
Jonathan Swift
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
I row after health like a waterman.
Jonathan Swift
Pride, ill nature, and want of sense are the three great sources of ill manners without some one of these defects, no man will behave himself ill for want of experience, or what, in the language of fools, is called knowing the world.
Jonathan Swift
