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

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
Ancient
Morality
Short
Sages
System
Gathered
Fall
Delivered
Sage
Falls
Gospel

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I never knew any man cured of inattention.
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As love without esteem is capricious and volatile esteem without love is languid and cold.
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Books, like men their authors, have no more than one wayofcoming intothe world, but there areten thousand to go out of it, and return no more.
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A maxim in law has more weight in the world than an article of faith.
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I'll give you leave to call me anything, if you don't call me spade.
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There is no quality so contrary to any nature which one cannot affect, and put on upon occasion, in order to serve an interest.
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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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I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.
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That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.
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I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.
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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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Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
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Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like a face on the wall or the wainscot can, by two or three touches with a lead pencil, make it look visible, and agreeing with what he fancied.
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It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.
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What religion is he of? Why, he is an Anythingarian.
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There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
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My father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire I was the Third of five Sons.
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The tiny Lilliputians surmise that Gulliver's watch may be his god, because it is that which, he admits, he seldom does anything without consulting.
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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.
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There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.
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