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If the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my Travels.

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
World
Gulliver
Travels
Biographies
Dozen
Burn
Science
Would

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Though fear should lend him pinions like the wind, yet swifter fate will seize him from behind.
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He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
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I row after health like a waterman.
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One principal object of good-breeding is to suit our behaviour to the three several degrees of men, our superiors, our equals, and those below us.
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The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little.
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I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.
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By the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your country you are and ought to be as free a people as your brethren in England.
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Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
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She has more goodness in her little finger than he has in his whole body.
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They say fish should swim thrice * * * first it should swim in the sea (do you mind me?) then it should swim in butter, and at last, sirrah, it should swim in good claret.
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Men of wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.
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He that calls a man ungrateful sums up all the veil that a man can be guilty of.
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Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
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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.
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Two friendships in two breasts requires The same aversions and desires.
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The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides, While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides.
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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.
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They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
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All Pretences of foretelling by Astrology, are Deceits for this manifest Reason, because the Wise and Learned, who can only judge whether there be any Truth in this Science, do all unanimously agree to laugh at and despise it and none but the poor ignorant Vulgar give it any Credit.
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Many a truth is told in jest.
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