Quote

God hath intended our passions to prevail over reason.

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
Prevail
Intended
Hath
Passions
Passion
Reason

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

Image
It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Conversation is but carving! Give no more to every guest Than he's able to digest.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation td posterity? Let him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments.
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
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
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
Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible.
Jonathan Swift
Image
hoever wishes to win in this game must have patience and money, since the values are so little constant and the rumors so little founded on truth Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Hail fellow, well met.
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
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
Image
Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.
Jonathan Swift
Image
For though, in nature, depth and height Are equally held infinite: In poetry, the height we know 'Tis only infinite below.
Jonathan Swift
Image
I forget whether advice be among the lost things which Ariosto says are to be found in the moon: that and time ought to have been there.
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
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
This wine should be eaten, it is too good to be drunk.
Jonathan Swift
Image
Unjustly poets we asperse: Truth shines the brighter clad in verse, And all the fictions they pursue Do but insinuate what is true.
Jonathan Swift
Image
I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
Jonathan Swift
Image
All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor it is like spending this year part of the next year's revenue.
Jonathan Swift