Quote

Blot out, correct, insert, refine, enlarge, diminish, interline. Be mindful, when invention fails. To scratch your head and bite your nails.

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
Nails
Insert
Bites
Mindful
Correct
Scratch
Invention
Scratches
Failing
Bite
Head
Diminish
Blot
Fails
Refine
Mindfulness
Enlarge

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

Image
Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation td posterity? Let him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments.
Jonathan Swift
Image
The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
Jonathan Swift
Image
If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.
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
Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company.
Jonathan Swift
Image
The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclined men in the course of virtue, but seldom or ever reclaims the vicious.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Do you think I was born in a wood to be afraid of an owl?
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
I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.
Jonathan Swift
Image
I'll give you leave to call me anything, if you don't call me spade.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Surely mortal man is a broomstick!
Jonathan Swift
Image
Possession, they say, is eleven points of the law.
Jonathan Swift
Image
A true critic, in the perusal of a book, is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones.
Jonathan Swift
Image
In church your grandsire cut his throat to do the job too long he tarried: he should have had my hearty vote to cut his throat before he married.
Jonathan Swift
Image
They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
Jonathan Swift
Image
God hath intended our passions to prevail over reason.
Jonathan Swift
Image
May you live all the days of your life.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Polite Conversation Why, everyone one as they like as the good woman said when she kissed her cow.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters.
Jonathan Swift