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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

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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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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Vision is seeing the invisible.
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O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee, whose graceless children scorn to own thee! . Yet thou hast greater cause to be ashamed of them, than they of thee.
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Punning is a talent which no man affects to despise but he that is without it.
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Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.
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Everyone desires long life, not one old age.
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Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation td posterity? Let him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments.
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Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
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One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.
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The two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
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There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them.
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Come hither, all ye empty things, Ye bubbles rais'd by breath of Kings Who float upon the tide of state, Come hither, and behold your fate. Let pride be taught by this rebuke, How very mean a thing's a Duke From all his ill-got honours flung, Turn'd to that dirt from whence he sprung.
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It often happens that, if a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done its work, and there is no further occasion for it.
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Though Diogenes lived in a tub, there might be, for aught I know, as much pride under his rags, as in the fine-spun garments of the divine Plato.
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Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.
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Polite Conversation Why, everyone one as they like as the good woman said when she kissed her cow.
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Few are qualified to shine in company, but it is in most men's power to be agreeable.
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Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.
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A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious and low.
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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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