Jonathan Swift (1667–1745,) known as “Dean Swift,” was an Irish satirist, poet, and Anglican cleric. His work has not only been continuously in print but also influenced writers as diverse as William Makepeace Thackeray and George Orwell.
Born in Dublin of English parents, Swift was educated at Kilkenny School and Trinity College, Dublin. He became secretary to the English statesman and essayist William Temple and took holy orders in 1695. Swift’s initial works include The Battle of the Books (1704) and the witty and notorious A Tale of a Tub (1704,) which established Swift’s reputation.
Ordained an Anglican priest in 1694, Swift became Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, in 1713. There he wrote his best-known work, Gulliver’s Travels (1726,) a satire on human follies and social institutions in the form of a fantastic tale of travels in imaginary lands.
Swift also wrote many works condemning England’s treatment of Ireland, including A Modest Proposal (1729.) His notable poems include Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift (1739,) in which he evaluates his life and his work with sarcastic detachment and the satirical On Poetry, a Rhapsody (1733.)
Swift is buried in Dublin’s St Patrick’s Cathedral; his famous epitaph reads “ubi saeva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit” (“where fierce indignation cannot further tear apart the heart.”)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Jonathan Swift
This is every cook’s opinion – no savory dish without an onion, but lest your kissing should be spoiled your onions must be fully boiled.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Eating
Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind reception it meets with in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.
—Jonathan Swift
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
Topics: Writers, Authors & Writing
Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Censorship, Criticism
It is hard to form a maxim against which an exception is not ready to start up: as “where the minister grows rich, the public is proportionately poor” as “in a private family the steward always thrives the fastest when the lord is running out.”
—Jonathan Swift
It was a bold person that first ate an oyster.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Risk
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
Topics: Children
There’s none so blind as they that won’t see.
—Jonathan Swift
We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Religion
Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals are an imitation of fighting.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Sports
Whoever 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.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Dreams, Vision, Forethought, Prophecy, Winning, Foresight, Winners
Style may be defined, “proper words in proper places.”
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Style
When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
—Jonathan Swift
Imaginary evils soon become real 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
Topics: Evils
No man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one, who mistook them.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Self-Knowledge
‘Tis an old maxim in the schools,
That flattery’s the food of fools;
Yet now and then your men of wit
Will condescend to take a bit.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Flattery
Flattery is the worst and falsest way of showing our esteem
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Flattery
Some modern zealots appear to have no better knowledge of truth, nor better manner of judging it, than by counting noses.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Truth
Brisk talkers are usually slow thinkers. There is, indeed, no wild beast more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate. If you are civil to the voluble they will abuse your patience; if brusque, your character.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Talking
For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labor, and search, and ranging through every corner of nature; the difference is that instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Discovery, Culture
Style may defined as the proper words in the proper places.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Style, Authors & Writing, Words, Writers
Whoever reads only to transcribe or quote shining remarks without entering into the genius and spirit of the author, will be apt to be misled out of a regular way of thinking, and the product of all this will be found to be a manifest incoherent piece of patchwork.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Quotations
Mere rhetoric, in serious discourses, is like flowers in corn, pleasing to those who look only for amusement, but prejudicial to him who would reap profit from it.
—Jonathan Swift
The only benefit of flattery is that by hearing what we are not, we may be instructed what we ought to be.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Flattery
I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Religion, Churches
He was a bold man that first eat an oyster.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Boldness
Promises and Pye-Crusts, are made to be broken.
—Jonathan Swift
As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Shame
She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitch folk.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Fashion, Dress
Get thorough insight into the index, by which the whole book is governed.
—Jonathan Swift
Vanity is a natural object of temptation to a woman.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Vanity
If a proud man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is that he keeps his at the same time.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Pride
When we are old, our friends find it difficult to please us, and are less concerned whether we be pleased or not.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Friendship
She looks as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Insults
No preacher is listened to but time; which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have tried in vain to put into our heads.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Time
Abstracts, abridgments, summaries, etc., have the same use as burning glasses, to collect the diffused rays of wit and learning in authors, and make them point with warmth and quickness upon the reader’s imagination.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Quotations
If a man should register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning, etc., beginning from his youth, and so go on to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Opinion
I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Kisses, Kissing
A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious, and low.
—Jonathan Swift
What some people invent the rest enlarge.
—Jonathan Swift
Topics: Humor
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