Quotes About Jonathan Swift

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.

Let that be as it will, thus much is certain, that, however spiritual intrigues begin, they generally conclude like all others; they may branch upward toward heaven, but the root is in the earth.

Swift has sailed into his rest; Savage indignation there Cannot lacerate his Breast. Imitate him if you dare, World-Besotted Traveler; he Served human liberty.

Many hundred large volumes have been published upon this controversy: but the books of the Big-endians have been long forbidden, and the whole party rendered incapable by law of holding employments. 

So that, upon the whole, there must be some kind of subjection due from every man to every man, which cannot be made void by any power, pre-eminence, or authority whatsoever. 

For this kind of commodity will not bear exportation, the flesh being of too tender a consistence to admit a long continuance in salt, although perhaps I could name a country which would be glad to eat up our whole nation without it.

And when I began to consider that, by copulating with one of the Yahoo species I had become a parent of more, it struck me with the utmost shame, confusion, and horror.

The Houyhnhnm's notion of truth and falsehood. The author's discourse disapproved by his master. The author gives a more particular account of himself, and the accidents of his voyage. M

The reader may remember, that when I signed those articles upon which I recovered my liberty, there were some which I disliked, upon account of their being too servile; neither

it. He called it his oracle, and said, it pointed out the time for every action of his life.

pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.

La palabra que yo traduzco por la isla volante o flotante es en el idioma original laputa, de la cual no he podido saber nunca la verdadera etimología. Lap, en el lenguaje antiguo fuera de uso, significa alto, y untuh, piloto; de donde dicen que, por corrupción, se deriva laputa, de lapuntuh.

seen the moral of my own behavior very frequent in England since my return, where a little contemptible varlet, without the least title to birth, person, wit, or common-sense, shall presume to look with importance, and put himself upon a foot with the greatest persons of the kingdom.

the other part of the parliament consisted of an assembly called the House of Commons, who were all principal gentlemen, freely picked and culled out by the people themselves, for their great abilities and love of their country, to represent the wisdom of the whole nation.

When the Lilliputians first saw Gulliver's watch, that "wonderful kind of engine...a globe, half silver and half of some transparent metal," they identified it immediately as the god he worshiped. After all, "he seldom did anything without consulting it: he called it his oracle, and said it pointed out the time for every action in his life." To Jonathan Swift in 1726 that was worth a bit of satire. Modernity was under way. We're all Gullivers now. Or are we Yahoos?

The most brilliant satire of all time was 'A Modest Proposal' by Jonathan Swift. You'll notice how everything got straightened out in Ireland within days of that coming out.

What religion is he of? Why, he is an Anythingarian.

Religion supposed Heaven and Hell, the word of God, and sacraments, and twenty other circumstances which, taken seriously, are a wonderful check to wit and humour.

As Jonathan Swift said in 1721: 'Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired.

There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.

Mike Judge is my Jonathan Swift, and I say that because I don't know any other satirists. But the problem with satire is that it's so easily misinterpreted.

We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as in books it is generally the worst sort of reading

Under an oak, in stormy weather,I joined this rogue and whore together;And none but he who rules the thunderCan put this rogue and whore asunder.