Quote

There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.

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
Requires
Contemptible
Management
Vice
Figure
Skill
Skills
Folly
Figures
Ill
Makes
Vanity
Much
Vices
Nicety
Manage
Niceties

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

Image
Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
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
It is an uncontrolled truth, that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them.
Jonathan Swift
Image
I row after health like a waterman.
Jonathan Swift
Image
He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
Jonathan Swift
Image
A forward critic often dupes us With sham quotations peri hupsos, And if we have not read Longinus, Will magisterially outshine us. Then, lest with Greek he over-run ye, Procure the book for love or money, Translated from Boileau's translation, And quote quotation on quotation.
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
By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired
Jonathan Swift
Image
I cannot but conclude that the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.
Jonathan Swift
Image
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.
Jonathan Swift
Image
The tiny Lilliputians surmise that Gulliver's watch may be his god, because it is that which, he admits, he seldom does anything without consulting.
Jonathan Swift
Image
The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
Jonathan Swift
Image
And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
Jonathan Swift
Image
A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
Jonathan Swift
Image
The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.
Jonathan Swift
Image
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
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
A ridiculous passion which hath no being but in play-books and romances.
Jonathan Swift
Image
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.
Jonathan Swift