Quote

Philosophy! the lumber of the schools.

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
School
Lumber
Schools
Philosophy

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

Image
He that calls a man ungrateful sums up all the veil that a man can be guilty of.
Jonathan Swift
Image
A college joke to cure the dumps.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Perpetual aiming at wit is a very bad part of conversation. It is done to support a character: it generally fails it is a sort of insult on the company, and a restraint upon the speaker.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Though Diogenes lived in a tub, there might be, for aught I know, as much pride under his rags, as in the fine-spun garments of the divine Plato.
Jonathan Swift
Image
I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.
Jonathan Swift
Image
All panegyrics are mingled with an infusion of poppy.
Jonathan Swift
Image
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.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Come hither, all ye empty things, Ye bubbles rais'd by breath of Kings Who float upon the tide of state, Come hither, and behold your fate. Let pride be taught by this rebuke, How very mean a thing's a Duke From all his ill-got honours flung, Turn'd to that dirt from whence he sprung.
Jonathan Swift
Image
... the atheists, libertines, despisers of religion ... that is to say all those who usually pass under the name of Free-thinkers.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.
Jonathan Swift
Image
I never knew any man cured of inattention.
Jonathan Swift
Image
In church your grandsire cut his throat to do the job too long he tarried: he should have had my hearty vote to cut his throat before he married.
Jonathan Swift
Image
How often do we contradict the right rules of reason in the whole course of our lives! Reason itself is true and just, but the reason of every particular man is weak and wavering, perpetually swayed and turned by his interests, his passions, and his vices.
Jonathan Swift
Image
All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor it is like spending this year part of the next year's revenue.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation td posterity? Let him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments.
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
Religion seems to have grown an infant with age, and requires miracles to nurse it, as it had in its infancy.
Jonathan Swift
Image
It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.
Jonathan Swift
Image
So, naturalists observe, a flea Hath smaller fleas that on him prey And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum.
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