Quote

Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.

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
Source
Sense
Three
Nature
Great
Sources
Ill
Manners
Pride

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

Image
For poetry, he's past his prime, He takes an hour to find a rhyme His fire is out, his wit decayed, His fancy sunk, his muse a jade. I'd have him throw away his pen, But there's no talking to some men.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Polite Conversation Why, everyone one as they like as the good woman said when she kissed her cow.
Jonathan Swift
Image
When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.
Jonathan Swift
Image
That incessant envy wherewith the common rate of mankind pursues all superior natures to their own.
Jonathan Swift
Image
God hath intended our passions to prevail over reason.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.
Jonathan Swift
Image
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
Image
If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning etc., beginning from his youth, and so go to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last.
Jonathan Swift
Image
So, naturalists observe, a flea Hath smaller fleas that on him prey And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum.
Jonathan Swift
Image
This Day, whate'er the Fates decree Shall still be kept with Joy by me: This Day then, let us not be told, That you are sick, and I grown old
Jonathan Swift
Image
Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Sweeping from butcher's stalls, dung, guts, and blood, Drown'd puppies, stinking sprats, all drench'd in mud, Dead cats, and turnip-tops, come tumbling down the flood.
Jonathan Swift
Image
It is not so much the being exempt from faults as the having overcome them that is an advantage to us it being with the follies of the mind as with weeds of a field, which if destroyed and consumed upon the place where they grow, enrich and improve it more than if none had ever sprung there.
Jonathan Swift
Image
She 's no chicken she 's on the wrong side of thirty, if she be a day.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Everybody wants to live forever, but nobody wants to grow old.
Jonathan Swift
Image
For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
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
A maxim in law has more weight in the world than an article of faith.
Jonathan Swift
Image
He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
Jonathan Swift
Image
A fig for your bill of fare show me your bill of company.
Jonathan Swift