Quote

Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.

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
Comets
Pretence
Beard
Events
Age
Reverenced
Reason
Pretences
Long
Foretell
Men
Beards

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

Image
It may pass for a maxim in State, that the administration cannot be placed in too few hands, nor the legislature in too many.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Desponding Phyllis was endu'd With ev'ry Talent of a Prude, She trembled when a Man drew near Salute her, and she turn'd her Ear: If o'er against her you were plac'd She durst not look above your Waist
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
It is an uncontrolled truth, that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Religion supposed Heaven and Hell, the word of God, and sacraments, and twenty other circumstances which, taken seriously, are a wonderful check to wit and humour.
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
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
O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee, whose graceless children scorn to own thee! . Yet thou hast greater cause to be ashamed of them, than they of thee.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Philosophy! the lumber of the schools.
Jonathan Swift
Image
It is very unfair in any writer to employ ignorance and malice together, because it gives his answerer double work.
Jonathan Swift
Image
War: that mad game the world so loves to play.
Jonathan Swift
Image
I've often wish'd that I had clear, For life, six hundred pounds a year A handsome house to lodge a friend A river at my garden's end A terrace walk, and half a rood Of land set out to plant a wood.
Jonathan Swift
Image
You cannot reason a person out of something they were not reasoned into.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.
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
Everyone desires long life, not one old age.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Words are but wind and learning is nothing but words ergo, learning is nothing but wind.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Two friendships in two breasts requires The same aversions and desires.
Jonathan Swift