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Satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any.

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
Offence
Satire
Never
Levelled
Resented

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Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone.
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They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
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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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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.
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Lord, Madame, I have fed like a farmer I shall grow as fat as a porpoise.
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Liberty of conscience is nowadays only understood to be the liberty of believing what men please, but also of endeavoring to propagate that belief as much as they can.
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The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
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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.
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No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore, money is better than counsel.
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Pedantry is properly the over-rating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to.
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Fond of those hives where folly reigns, And cards and scandal are the chains, Where the pert virgin slights a name, And scorns to redden into shame.
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This made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavor to do himself honor among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him.
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Story-telling is subject to two unavoidable defects,--frequent repetition and being soon exhausted so that, whoever values this gift in himself, has need of a good memory, and ought frequently to shift his company.
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Few are qualified to shine in company, but it is in most men's power to be agreeable.
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Books, the children of the brain.
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In all distresses of our friends We first consult our private ends While Nature, kindly bent to ease us, Points out some circumstance to please us.
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Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.
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Flattery is the worst and falsest way of showing our esteem.
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The affectation of some late authors to introduce and multiply cant words is the most ruinous corruption in any language.
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A footman may swear but he cannot swear like a lord. He can swear as often: but can he swear with equal delicacy, propriety, and judgment?
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