Quote

The system of morality to be gathered from the ancient sages falls very short of that delivered in the gospel.

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
Fall
Delivered
Sage
Falls
Gospel
Ancient
Morality
Short
Sages
System
Gathered

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

Image
If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.
Jonathan Swift
Image
The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company.
Jonathan Swift
Image
One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.
Jonathan Swift
Image
I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.
Jonathan Swift
Image
By the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your country you are and ought to be as free a people as your brethren in England.
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
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
Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Hail, follow, well met, All dirty and wet: Find out, if you can, Who's master, who's man.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.
Jonathan Swift
Image
This wine should be eaten, it is too good to be drunk.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Small causes are sufficient to make a man uneasy, when great ones are not in the way: for want of a block he will stumble at a straw.
Jonathan Swift
Image
It is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they are employed on as when they have lost their edge.
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
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.
Jonathan Swift
Image
By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty.
Jonathan Swift
Image
A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.
Jonathan Swift
Image
A ridiculous passion which hath no being but in play-books and romances.
Jonathan Swift
Image
You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday
Jonathan Swift