Quote

I can discover no political evil in suffering bullies, sharpers, and rakes, to rid the world of each other by a method of their own where the law hath not been able to find an expedient.

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
World
Discover
Method
Law
Suffering
Rakes
Evil
Expedient
Political
Bullies
Able
Bully
Find
Hath

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

Image
My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
Jonathan Swift
Image
I remember it was with extreme difficulty that I could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word opinion, or how a point could be disputable because reason taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain and beyond our knowledge we cannot do either.
Jonathan Swift
Image
If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning etc., beginning from his youth, and so go to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Daphne knows, with equal ease, How to vex and how to please But the folly of her sex Makes her sole delight to vex.
Jonathan Swift
Image
I shall be like that tree-I shall die at the top.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Pray steal me not, I'm Mrs. Dingley's, Whose heart in this four-footed thing lies.
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
Image
The best Maxim I know in this life is, to drink your Coffee when you can, and when you cannot, to be easy without it. While you continue to be splenetic, count upon it I will always preach. Thus much I sympathize with you that I am not cheerful enough to write, for I believe Coffee once a week is necessary to that.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Ale is meat, drink and cloth it will make a cat speak and a wise man dumb.
Jonathan Swift
Image
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.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Principally I hate and detest that animal called man although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Under the rose, since here are none but friends, To own the truth we have some private ends.
Jonathan Swift
Image
No preacher is listened to but time, which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have in vain tried to put into our heads before.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Just get the right syllable in the proper place.
Jonathan Swift
Image
They say fish should swim thrice * * * first it should swim in the sea (do you mind me?) then it should swim in butter, and at last, sirrah, it should swim in good claret.
Jonathan Swift
Image
It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.
Jonathan Swift
Image
No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.
Jonathan Swift
Image
May you live all the days of your life.
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
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