Quote

Conversation is but carving! Give no more to every guest Than he's able to digest.

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
Every
Carving
Digest
Guest
Guests
Conversation
Give
Able
Giving

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

Image
Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.
Jonathan Swift
Image
For to enter the palace of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms, therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back-door
Jonathan Swift
Image
Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
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
A college joke to cure the dumps.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Cruel people are ever cowards in emergency.
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
May you live all the days of your life.
Jonathan Swift
Image
There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them.
Jonathan Swift
Image
A Child will make two Dishes at an Entertainment for Friends and when the Family dines alone, the fore or hind Quarter will makea reasonable Dish and seasoned with a little Pepper or Salt, will be very good Boiled on the fourth Day, especially in Winter.
Jonathan Swift
Image
The two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
Jonathan Swift
Image
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?
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
There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.
Jonathan Swift
Image
A fig for your bill of fare show me your bill of company.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.
Jonathan Swift
Image
In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Pray steal me not, I'm Mrs. Dingley's, Whose heart in this four-footed thing lies.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Hail fellow, well met.
Jonathan Swift
Image
The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little.
Jonathan Swift