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Under the rose, since here are none but friends, To own the truth we have some private ends.

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
None
Since
Friends
Ends
Truth
Secrecy
Rose
Private

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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Such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up.
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Faith, that's as well said as if I had said it myself.
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For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
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Do you think I was born in a wood to be afraid of an owl?
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War: that mad game the world so loves to play.
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She has more goodness in her little finger than he has in his whole body.
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Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs, Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.
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I'm up and down and round about, Yet all the world can't find me out Though hundreds have employed their leisure, They never yet could find my measure.
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Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
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Punning is a talent which no man affects to despise but he that is without it.
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A jargon form'd from the lost language, wit, Confounded in that Babel of the pit Form'd by diseased conceptions, weak and wild, Sick lust of souls, and an abortive child Born between whores and fops, by lewd compacts, Before the play, or else between the acts Nor wonder, if from such polluted minds Should spring such short and transitory kinds.
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With a whirl of thought oppressed I sink from reverie to rest. An horrid vision seized my head, I saw the graves give up their dead.
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Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.
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Bread is the staff of life.
Jonathan Swift
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Conscience signifies that knowledge which a man hath of his own thoughts and actions and because, if a man judgeth fairly of his actions by comparing them with the law of God, his mind will approve or condemn him this knowledge or conscience may be both an accuser and a judge.
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If a lump of soot falls into the soup and you cannot conveniently get it out, stir it well in and it will give the soup a French taste.
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It often happens that, if a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done its work, and there is no further occasion for it.
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Lose no time to contradict her, Nor endeavor to convict her Only take this rule along, Always to advise her wrong, And reprove her when she's right She may then grow wise for spite.
Jonathan Swift
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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.
Jonathan Swift
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Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company.
Jonathan Swift