Quote

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.

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
Particular
Competitors
Family
Consequences
Government
Avoid
Right
Kept
Consequence
Ambition
Inalienable
Sacred
Hereditary
Usually
Attend

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

Image
All Pretences of foretelling by Astrology, are Deceits for this manifest Reason, because the Wise and Learned, who can only judge whether there be any Truth in this Science, do all unanimously agree to laugh at and despise it and none but the poor ignorant Vulgar give it any Credit.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company.
Jonathan Swift
Image
I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.
Jonathan Swift
Image
The lack of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.
Jonathan Swift
Image
A wise man will find us to be rogues by our faces.
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
Polite Conversation Why, everyone one as they like as the good woman said when she kissed her cow.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Faith, that's as well said as if I had said it myself.
Jonathan Swift
Image
There is no quality so contrary to any nature which one cannot affect, and put on upon occasion, in order to serve an interest.
Jonathan Swift
Image
That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.
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
God hath intended our passions to prevail over reason.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
Jonathan Swift
Image
He that calls a man ungrateful sums up all the veil that a man can be guilty of.
Jonathan Swift
Image
This wine should be eaten, it is too good to be drunk.
Jonathan Swift
Image
I have known some men possessed of good qualities which were very serviceable to others, but useless to themselves like a sun-dial on the front of a house, to inform the neighbours and passengers, but not the owner within.
Jonathan Swift
Image
We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
Jonathan Swift
Image
The more careless, the more modish.
Jonathan Swift
Image
If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.
Jonathan Swift