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The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little.
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
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Firsts
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Springs
Mean
Rivers
Great
Spring
Like
Events
Often
Littles
More quotes by Jonathan Swift
What they do in heaven we are ignorant of what they do not do we are told expressly.
Jonathan Swift
No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.
Jonathan Swift
But you think that it is time for me to have done with the world, and so I would if I could get into a better before I was called into the best, and not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.
Jonathan Swift
Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.
Jonathan Swift
Whence proceeds this weight we lay On what detracting people say? Their utmost malice cannot make Your head, or tooth, or finger ache Nor spoil your shapes, distort your face, Or put one feature out of place.
Jonathan Swift
She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork.
Jonathan Swift
There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
Jonathan Swift
Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
Jonathan Swift
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
If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.
Jonathan Swift
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.
Jonathan Swift
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.
Jonathan Swift
And, is not Virtue in Mankind The Nutriment that feeds the Mind?
Jonathan Swift
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.
Jonathan Swift
Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.
Jonathan Swift
Possession, they say, is eleven points of the law.
Jonathan Swift
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
I cannot imagine why we should be at the expense to furnish wit for succeeding ages, when the former have made no sort of provision for ours.
Jonathan Swift
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
The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.
Jonathan Swift
