Quote

Story-telling is subject to two unavoidable defects,--frequent repetition and being soon exhausted so that, whoever values this gift in himself, has need of a good memory, and ought frequently to shift his company.

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
Two
Gift
Repetition
Stories
Soon
Shift
Need
Subjects
Exhausted
Needs
Ought
Frequently
Good
Memories
Whoever
Company
Memory
Unavoidable
Story
Subject
Frequent
Values
Telling
Defects

More quotes by 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
There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.
Jonathan Swift
Image
It is a maxim, that those, to whom everybody allows the second place, have an undoubted title to the first.
Jonathan Swift
Image
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.
Jonathan Swift
Image
That incessant envy wherewith the common rate of mankind pursues all superior natures to their own.
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
A wise man will find us to be rogues by our faces.
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
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.
Jonathan Swift
Image
You must take the will for the deed.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible.
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
Image
For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
Jonathan Swift
Image
A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters.
Jonathan Swift
Image
It may pass for a maxim in State, that the administration cannot be placed in too few hands, nor the legislature in too many.
Jonathan Swift
Image
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
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
Possession, they say, is eleven points of the law.
Jonathan Swift
Image
If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.
Jonathan Swift