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

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I'll give you leave to call me anything, if you don't call me spade.
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All panegyrics are mingled with an infusion of poppy.
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In men desire begets love, and in women love begets desire.
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It is not so much the being exempt from faults as the having overcome them that is an advantage to us it being with the follies of the mind as with weeds of a field, which if destroyed and consumed upon the place where they grow, enrich and improve it more than if none had ever sprung there.
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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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In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man uncapable of holding any public station for, since kings avow themselves to be the deputies of Providence.
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For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labor, and search, and ranging through every corner of nature the difference is that instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
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Religion supposed Heaven and Hell, the word of God, and sacraments, and twenty other circumstances which, taken seriously, are a wonderful check to wit and humour.
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Daphne knows, with equal ease, How to vex and how to please But the folly of her sex Makes her sole delight to vex.
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You must take the will for the deed.
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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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Unjustly poets we asperse: Truth shines the brighter clad in verse, And all the fictions they pursue Do but insinuate what is true.
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A maxim in law has more weight in the world than an article of faith.
Jonathan Swift
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Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.
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If you were not reasoned into your beliefs, you cannot be reasoned out of them.
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Such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up.
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111 company is like a dog, who dirts those most whom he loves best.
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A lie is an excuse guarded
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He that calls a man ungrateful sums up all the veil that a man can be guilty of.
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Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
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