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A true critic, in the perusal of a book, is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones.

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
Dog
Feast
Whose
Consequently
Thoughts
Critic
Upon
Wholly
Away
Guests
Perusal
True
Stomach
Snarl
Book
Bones
Fewest
Like
Critics
Fling

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Kitchen Physic is the best Physic.
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What poet would not grieve to see His brother write as well as he? But rather than they should excel, He'd wish his rivals all in Hell.
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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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What vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me, although I am not so old in proportion to them as I formerly was: which I can prove by arithmetic, for then I was double their age, which now I am not. Letter to Alexander Pope. 7 Feb. 1736.
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They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
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Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company.
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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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What we call the Irish Brogue is no sooner discovered, than it makes the deliverer, in the last degree, ridiculous and despised and, from such a mouth, an Englishman expects nothing but bulls, blunders, and follies.
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The affectation of some late authors to introduce and multiply cant words is the most ruinous corruption in any language.
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Rebukes are easy from our betters, From men of quality and letters But when low dunces will affront, What man alive can stand the brunt?
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It is a maxim, that those, to whom everybody allows the second place, have an undoubted title to the first.
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Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
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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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Bread is the staff of life.
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Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs, Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.
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Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age.
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For, if we take an examination of what is generally understood by happiness, as it has respect either to the understanding or the senses, we shall find all its properties and adjuncts will herd under this short definition: that it is a perpetual possession of being well deceived.
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The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclined men in the course of virtue, but seldom or ever reclaims the vicious.
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A lie is an excuse guarded
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My horses understand me tolerably well I converse with them at least four hours every day. They are strangers to bridle or saddle they live in great amity with me, and friendship of each other.
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