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Pedantry is properly the over-rating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to.

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
Rating
Properly
Pretend
Knowledge
Kind
Pedantry

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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How often do we contradict the right rules of reason in the whole course of our lives! Reason itself is true and just, but the reason of every particular man is weak and wavering, perpetually swayed and turned by his interests, his passions, and his vices.
Jonathan Swift
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Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination.
Jonathan Swift
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Whence proceeds this weight we lay On what detracting people say? Their utmost malice cannot make Your head, or tooth, or finger ache Nor spoil your shapes, distort your face, Or put one feature out of place.
Jonathan Swift
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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
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Just get the right syllable in the proper place.
Jonathan Swift
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A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious and low.
Jonathan Swift
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All panegyrics are mingled with an infusion of poppy.
Jonathan Swift
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All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor it is like spending this year part of the next year's revenue.
Jonathan Swift
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My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
Jonathan Swift
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I am convinced that if the virtuosi could once find out a world in the moon, with a passage to it, our women would wear nothing but what directly came from thence.
Jonathan Swift
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There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.
Jonathan Swift
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In all I wish, how happy should I be, Thou grand Deluder, were it not for thee? So weak thou art that fools thy power despise And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise.
Jonathan Swift
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Nor do they trust their tongue alone, but speak a language of their own can read a nod, a shrug, a look, far better than a printed book convey a libel in a frown, and wink a reputation down.
Jonathan Swift
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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
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There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.
Jonathan Swift
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Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe, how much it altered her person for the worse.
Jonathan Swift
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This wine should be eaten, it is too good to be drunk.
Jonathan Swift
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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
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Ever eating, never cloying, All-devouring, all-destroying Never finding full repast, Till I eat the world at last.
Jonathan Swift
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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