Quote

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.

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
Measure
Though
Find
Employed
Never
Hundreds
World
Leisure
Circles
Round
Rounds

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I have known some men possessed of good qualities which were very serviceable to others, but useless to themselves like a sun-dial on the front of a house, to inform the neighbours and passengers, but not the owner within.
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Hereditary right should be kept sacred, not from any inalienable right in a particular family, but to avoid the consequences that usually attend the ambition of competitors.
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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.
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Everybody wants to live forever, but nobody wants to grow old.
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This wine should be eaten, it is too good to be drunk.
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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.
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The example alone of a vicious prince will corrupt an age but that of a good one will not reform it.
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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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When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.
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I remember it was with extreme difficulty that I could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word opinion, or how a point could be disputable because reason taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain and beyond our knowledge we cannot do either.
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So geographers, in Africa maps, With savage pictures fill their gaps, And o'er uninhabitable downs Place elephants for want of towns
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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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A lie is an excuse guarded
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Surely mortal man is a broomstick!
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The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
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Daphne knows, with equal ease, How to vex and how to please But the folly of her sex Makes her sole delight to vex.
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I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
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Many a truth is told in jest.
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In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.
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Vision is seeing the invisible.
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