Quote

It is the first rule in oratory that a man must appear such as he would persuade others to be: and that can be accomplished only by the force of his life.

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
Force
Others
Firsts
First
Oratory
Must
Persuade
Would
Accomplished
Men
Appear
Life
Rule

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

Image
Ever eating, never cloying, All-devouring, all-destroying Never finding full repast, Till I eat the world at last.
Jonathan Swift
Image
I always love to begin a journey on Sundays, because I shall have the prayers of the church to preserve all that travel by land, or water.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Pray steal me not, I'm Mrs. Dingley's, Whose heart in this four-footed thing lies.
Jonathan Swift
Image
It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next. Future ages shall talk of this they shall be famous to all posterity whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now.
Jonathan Swift
Image
My Lawyer being practiced almost from his Cradle in defending Falsehood is quite out of his Element when he would be an Advocate for Justice, which as an Office unnatural, he always attempts with great Awkwardness if not with Ill-will.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Whoe'er excels in what we prize, Appears a hero in our eyes Each girl, when pleased with what is taught, Will have the teacher in her thought. . . . . A blockhead with melodious voice, In boarding-schools may have his choice.
Jonathan Swift
Image
A chuck under the chin is worth two kisses.
Jonathan Swift
Image
That incessant envy wherewith the common rate of mankind pursues all superior natures to their own.
Jonathan Swift
Image
A wise man will find us to be rogues by our faces.
Jonathan Swift
Image
I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up.
Jonathan Swift
Image
So geographers, in Africa maps, With savage pictures fill their gaps, And o'er uninhabitable downs Place elephants for want of towns
Jonathan Swift
Image
If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.
Jonathan Swift
Image
I would rather be a freeman among slaves than a slave among freemen.
Jonathan Swift
Image
It is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they are employed on as when they have lost their edge.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Whence proceeds this weight we lay On what detracting people say? Their utmost malice cannot make Your head, or tooth, or finger ache Nor spoil your shapes, distort your face, Or put one feature out of place.
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
Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.
Jonathan Swift
Image
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.
Jonathan Swift
Image
A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention, by false speaking, to deceive and injure your neighbour.
Jonathan Swift