Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The example alone of a vicious prince will corrupt an age but that of a good one will not reform it.
Jonathan Swift
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Example
Alone
Age
Good
Corrupt
Prince
Vicious
Reform
Kings
More quotes by Jonathan Swift
Everyone desires long life, not one old age.
Jonathan Swift
Pray steal me not, I'm Mrs. Dingley's, Whose heart in this four-footed thing lies.
Jonathan Swift
My Lawyer being practiced almost from his Cradle in defending Falsehood is quite out of his Element when he would be an Advocate for Justice, which as an Office unnatural, he always attempts with great Awkwardness if not with Ill-will.
Jonathan Swift
Ingratitude is amongst them a capital crime, as we read it to have been in some other countries: for they reason thus that whoever makes ill-returns to his benefactor, must needs be a common enemy to the rest of the mankind, from where he has received no obligations and therefore such man is not fit to live.
Jonathan Swift
Punning is a talent which no man affects to despise but he that is without it.
Jonathan Swift
He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
Jonathan Swift
Whoe'er excels in what we prize, Appears a hero in our eyes Each girl, when pleased with what is taught, Will have the teacher in her thought. . . . . A blockhead with melodious voice, In boarding-schools may have his choice.
Jonathan Swift
I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.
Jonathan Swift
You must take the will for the deed.
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
It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next. Future ages shall talk of this they shall be famous to all posterity whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now.
Jonathan Swift
Unjustly poets we asperse: Truth shines the brighter clad in verse, And all the fictions they pursue Do but insinuate what is true.
Jonathan Swift
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
No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore, money is better than counsel.
Jonathan Swift
Hail fellow, well met.
Jonathan Swift
I cannot but conclude that the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.
Jonathan Swift
Such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up.
Jonathan Swift
The system of morality to be gathered from the ancient sages falls very short of that delivered in the gospel.
Jonathan Swift
Story-telling is subject to two unavoidable defects,--frequent repetition and being soon exhausted so that, whoever values this gift in himself, has need of a good memory, and ought frequently to shift his company.
Jonathan Swift
Though fear should lend him pinions like the wind, yet swifter fate will seize him from behind.
Jonathan Swift