Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

Quotations: Swift from Other Sources

"I remember when I was a little boy, I felt a great fish at the end of my line which I drew up almost on the ground. But it dropped in and the disappointment vexeth me to this very day and I believe it was the type of all my future disappointments." quoted from a manuscript by Victoria Glendinning, "Beginning", Jonathan Swift: A Portrait [Correspondence, III, 329]

I often wished that I had clear,
For life, six hundred pounds a-year,
A handsome house to lodge a friend,
A river at my garden's end,
A terrace walk, and half a rood
Of land, set out to plant a wood.
-- Imitation of Horace (1714)

How does he fancy we can sit
To hear his out-of-fashion'd wit?
But he takes up with younger folks,
Who for his wine will bear his jokes.
Faith, he must make his stories shorter,
Or change his comrades once a quarter;
In half the time, he talks them round;
There must another set be found.
-- Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift

"I shall be like that tree,--I shall die at the top." Scott's Life of Swift.

"Only a woman's hair." -- "In a note in his biography, Scott says that his friend Dr. Tuke, of Dublin, has a lock of Stella's hair, enclosed in a paper by Swift, on which are written, in the Dean's hand, the words: 'Only a woman's hair.'" Thackeray, The English Humourists

"I would endeavour to comfort my self upon the loss of friends, as I do upon the loss of mony; by turning to my account-book, and seeing whether I have enough left for my support? but in the former Case I find I have not, any more than in the other; and I know not any man who is in a greater likelyhood than my self to die poor and friendless." letter to Alexander Pope, January 1733

I pity poor Jenny -- but her husband is a dunce, and with respect to him, she loses little by her deafness. -- Journal to Stella, 8 September 1711)

"I love good creditable acquaintance; I love to be the worst of the company." Journal to Stella, 17 May (1711)

He showed me his bill of fare to tempt me to dine with him; poh, said I, I value not your bill of fare, give me your bill of company. -- Journal to Stella, 2 September (1711)

We were to do more business after dinner; but after dinner is after dinner--an old saying and a true, 'much drinking, little thinking'." Journal to Stella, 26 February (1712)

"You see Pope, Gay, and I, use all our endeavours to make folks merry and wise, and profess to have no enemies, except knaves and fools..." [letter to Charles Wogan, 1732]

"[I have been gaining enemies by the scores, and friends by the couples, which is against the rules of wisdom, because they say] one enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good." Journal to Stella, June 30, 1711[?]

... the chief end I propose to myself in all my labours is to vex the world rather than divert it; and if I could compass that design without hurting my own person or fortune I would be the most indefatigable writer you have ever seen, without reading. -- letter to Alexander Pope, 29 Sept. 1725

When you think of the world, give it one lash the more at my request. I have ever hated all Nations professions and Communityes, and all my love is towards individuals; for instance, I hate the tribe of Lawyers, but love Councellor such a one, Judge such a one; ...so with Physicians (I will not speak of my own Trade), Soldiers, English, Scotch, French, and the rest, but principally I hate and detest that animal called man, although I hartily love John, Peter, Thomas and so forth. -- letter to Alexander Pope, 29 Sept. 1725

I have Materials Towards a Treatis proving the falsity of that Definition animal reationale; and to show it should be only rationis capax. Upon this great foundation of Misanthropy (though not Timons manner) The whole building of my Travels is erected: -- letter to Alexander Pope, 29 Sept. 1725

Drown the World, I am not content with despising it, but I would anger it if I could with safety. I wish there were an Hospital built for it's despisers, where one might act with safety and it need not be a large Building, only I would have it well endowed. -- letter to Alexander Pope, 26 Nov. 1725

"Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonable good understanding." Advice to A Young Poet

I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world. -- Polite Conversation. Dialogue i.

The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman. --Polite Conversation. Dialogue ii.

[probable source:	
	Use three physicians
	Still: first, Dr. Quiet;
	Next, Dr. Merryman,
	And Dr. Dyet.
	-- Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum (edition 1607)]
	

"We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same." Journal to Stella, 1 February (1711)

Falsehood flies and the truth comes limping after; so that when men come to be undeceived it is too late: the jest is over and the tale has had its effect. -- The Examiner, Number 15 (November 9, 1710)

Who can deny that all men are violent lovers of truth when we see them so positive in their errors, which they will maintain out of their zeal to truth, although they contradict themselves every day of their lives? -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

"I hate life when I think it is exposed to such accidents, and to see so many thousand wretches burdening the earth while such as her die makes me think God did never intend life for a blessing." (quoted by Lecky)

"Life is not a farce; it is a ridiculous tragedy, which is the worst kind of composition." letter to Pope (quoted by Lecky)

"It is impossible that any thing so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind." Thoughts on Religion

Every Man desires to live long; but no Man would be old. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

No wise man ever wished to be younger. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

May you live all the days of your life. --Polite Conversation. Dialogue ii.

Dignity, high station, or great riches, are in some sort necessary to old men, in order to keep the younger at a distance, who are otherwise too apt to insult them upon the score of their age. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

"Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age; so that our judgment grows harder to please, when we have fewer things to offer it: this goes through the whole commerce of life. When we are old, our friends find it difficult to please us, and are less concerned whether we be pleased or no." Thoughts on Various Subjects

"No preacher is listened to but Time, which gives us the same train and turn of thought that older people have tried in vain to put into our heads before." Thoughts on Various Subjects

The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier. Thoughts on Various Subjects

Old men view best at a distance with the eyes of their understanding as well as with those of nature. Thoughts on Various Subjects

"I have been only a man of rhymes, and that upon trifles, never having written serious couplets in my life, yet never any without a moral view..." [letter to Charles Wogan, 1732]

"...the Author never was known either in Verse or Prose to borrow any Thought, Simile, Epithet, or particular manner of Style; but whatever he writ, whether good, bad, or indifferent, is an Original in itself." advertisement, Works vol. II, 1735

Not that he [the author of A Tale of a Tub, i.e., Swift] would have governed his judgment by the ill-placed cavils of the sour, the envious, the stupid, and the tasteless, which he mentions with disdain. He acknowledges there are several youthful sallies which, from the grave and the wise, deserve a rebuke. But he desires to be answerable no farther than he is guilty, and that his faults may not be multiplied by the ignorant, the unnatural, and uncharitable applications of those who have neither the candour to suppose good meanings, nor palate to distinguish true ones. "Apology," June 3, 1709 Tale of a Tub and Other Works

I have employed my time, besides in ditching, in finishing, correcting, amending, and transcribing my Travels, in four parts complete, newly augmented, and intended for the press when the world shall deserve them, or rather when a printer shall be found brave enough to venture his ears. -- letter to Alexander Pope, 29 Sept. 1725

Dr. Arbuthnot likes the Projectors least, others you tell me, the Flying island; some think it wrong to be so hard upon whole Bodies or Corporations, yet the general opinion is, that reflections on particular persons are most to be blamed: so that in these cases, I think the best method is to let censure and opinion take their course. -- letter to Alexander Pope, 27 Nov. 1727

"First, never to print a man's name out at length; but as I do that of Mr. Stggesle. . . Secondly, by putting cases; thirdly by insinuation; fourthly by celebrating the actions of others, who acted directly contrary to the persons we would reflect on; fifthly, by nicknames . . . which everybody can tell how to apply" -- "The Importance of the Guardian Considered"

Proper words in proper places, make the true definitions of a style. -- Letter to a Young Gentleman Lately Enter'd into Holy Orders, Jan. 9, 1719/20

"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." -- The Battle of the Books

Books, like men their authors, have no more than one way of coming into the world, but there are ten thousand to go out of it and return no more. "To His Royal Highness Prince Posterity," A Tale of a Tub

"There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof, I hope, there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am not understood, it shall be concluded, that something very useful and profound is couched underneath; and again, that whatever word or sentence is printed in a different character, shall be judged to contain something extraordinary either or wit of sublime." Preface, The Tale of a Tub (1704).

Books, the children of the brain. A Tale of a Tub, section I

For in writing it is as in travelling: if a man is in haste to be at home ... if his horse be tired with long riding and ill ways, or be naturally a jade, I advise him clearly to make the straightest and the commonest road, be it ever so dirty. But then surely we must own such a man to be a scurvy companion at best; he spatters himself and his fellow-travellers at every step: all their thoughts, and wishes, and conversation, turn entirely upon the subject of their journey's end; and at every splash, and plunge, and stumble, they heartily wish one another at the devil. Tale of a Tub, section XI

I have one word to say upon the subject of profound writers, who are grown very numerous of late; and I know very well, the judicious world is resolved to list me in that number. I conceive therefore, as to the business of being profound, that it is with writers, as with wells; a person with good eyes may see to the bottom of the deepest, provided any water be there; and that often, when there is nothing in the world at the bottom, besides dryness and dirt, though it be but a yard and a half underground, it shall pass, however, for wondrous deep, upon no wiser a reason than because it is wondrous dark. -- Conclusion, A Tale of A Tub

I am now trying an experiment very frequent among modern authors; which is to write upon Nothing; when the subject is utterly exhausted, to let the pen still move on; by some called the ghost of Wit, delighting to walk after the death of its body. -- Conclusion, A Tale of A Tub

And to say the truth, there seems to be no part of knowledge in fewer hands, than that of discerning when to have done. -- Conclusion, A Tale of A Tub

... I am wonderfully well acquainted with the present relish of courteous readers, and have often observed with singular pleasure, that a fly driven from a honey-pot will immediately, with very good appetite, alight and finish his meal on an excrement. -- Conclusion, A Tale of a Tub

If books and laws continue to increase as they have done for fifty years past, I am in some concern for future ages how any man will be learned, or any man a lawyer. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

That was excellently observed, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.Thoughts on Various Subjects

Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation to posterity, let him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments. Thoughts on Various Subjects

In modern Wit all printed Trash, is
Set off with num'rous BreaksÑand DashesÐ
-- On Poetry: A Rapsody (1733)

Whatever the poets pretend, it is plain they give immortality to none but themselves; it is Homer and Virgil we reverence and admire, not Achilles or AEneas. With historians it is quite the contrary; our thoughts are taken up with the actions, persons, and events we read, and we little regard the authors. Thoughts on Various Subjects

"... poets, being liars by profession, ought to have good memories" -- Letter of Advice to a Young Poet

If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

"Men would be more cautious of losing their time in such an undertaking, if they did but consider that to answer a book effectively requires more pains and skill, more wit, learning, and judgment than were employed in the writing it. ("Apology," June 3, 1709 Tale of a Tub and Other Works. World's Classics. London : Oxford U. Press, 1984 [1986], p.5.)

... criticism, contrary to all other faculties of the intellect, is ever held the truest and best when it is the very first result of the critic's mind; as fowler reckon the first aim for the surest, and seldom fail of missing the mark if they stay for a second. "A Digression Concerning Critics," Tale of a Tub and Other Works. World's Classics. London : Oxford U. Press, 1984 [1986], p. 49

... the true critics are known by their talent of swarming about the noblest writers, to which they are carried merely by instinct, as a rat to the best cheese, or a wasp to the fairest fruit. So when a king is a horseback, he is sure to be the dirtiest person of the company, and they that make their court best, are such as bespatter him most. "A Digression Concerning Critics," Tale of a Tub and Other Works. World's Classics. London : Oxford U. Press, 1984 [1986], p. 49

... 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. "A Digression Concerning Critics," Tale of a Tub and Other Works. World's Classics. London : Oxford U. Press, 1984 [1986], p. 49

For, night being the universal mother of things, wise philosophers hold all writings to be fruitful in the proportion they are dark; Tale of a Tub, section X

scholastic midwifery hath delivered them of meanings, that the authors themselves perhaps never conceived, Tale of a Tub, section X

And first, I have couched a very profound mystery in the number of O's multiplied by seven, and divided by nine. Also, if a devout brother of the Rosy Cross will pray fervently for sixty- three mornings, with a lively faith, and then transpose certain letters and syllables according to prescription in the second and fifth section, they will certainly reveal into a full receipt of the opus magnum. Lastly, whoever will be at the' pains to calculate the whole number of each letter in this treatise, and sum up the difference exactly between the several numbers, assigning the true natural cause for every such difference, the discoveries in the product will plentifully reward his labour. Tale of a Tub, section X

Nor do I at all question, but they will furnish plenty of noble matter for such, whose converting imaginations dispose them to reduce all things into types; who can make shadows, no thanks to the sun, and then mould them into substances, no thanks to philosophy; whose peculiar talent lies in fixing tropes and allegories to the letter, and refining what is literal into figure and mystery. Tale of a Tub, section XI

And as in scholastic disputes nothing serves to rouse the spleen of him that opposes, so much as a kind of pedantic affected calmness in the respondent; disputants being for the most part like unequal scales, where the gravity of one side advances the lightness of the other, and causes it to fly up and kick the beam;" Tale of a Tub, section VI We of this age have discovered a shorter and more prudent method, to become scholars and wits, without the fatigue of reading or thinking. The most accomplished way of using books at present is two-fold; either first, to serve them as some men do lords, learn their titles exactly and then brag of their acquiantance. Or secondly, which is indeed the choicer, the profounder, and politer method, to get a thorough insight into the index, by which the whole book is governed and turned, like fishes by the tail. For, to enterthe palace of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms; therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back door. For the arts are all in a flying march, and therefore more easily subdued by attacking them in the rear. Thus physicians discover the state of the whole body by consulting only what comes from behind. Thus men catch knowledge by throwing their wit on the posteriors of book, as boys do sparrows with flinging salt upon their tails. "A Digression In Praise Of Digressions," Tale of a Tub, section VII

For what man in the natural state or course of thinking, did ever conceive it in his power to reduce the notions of all mankind exactly to the same length, and breadth, and height of his own? Yet this is the first humble and civil design of all innovators in the empire of reason. "A digression concerning madness," A Tale Of A Tub

"Because, first, it is generally affirmed, or confessed that learning puffeth men up; and, secondly, they proved it by the following syllogism: Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind." -- Tale of a Tub, Section VIII

"And therefore, in order to save the charges of all such expensive anatomy for the time to come, I do here think fit to inform the reader, that in such conclusions as these, reason is certainly in the right, and that in most corporeal beings, which have fallen under my cognizance, the outside hath been infinitely preferable to the in; whereof I have been farther convinced from some late experiments. Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe, how much it altered her person for the worse. Yesterday I ordered the carcass of a Beau to be stript in my presence; when we were all amazed to find so many unsuspected faults under one suit of cloaths. Then I laid open his Brain, his Heart, his Spleen; But I plainly perceived at every operation, that the farther we proceeded, we found the defects encrease in number and bulk, from all which, I justly form this conclusion to my self, that whatever philosopher or projector can find out an art to sodder and patch up the flaws and imperfections of nature will deserve much better of mankind and teach us more useful science, than that so much in esteem at present, of widening and exposing them (like him who held anatmomy the ultimate end of physick)." A Tale of a Tub, section IX

... fortune generally acts directly contrary to nature; for, in nature we find, that bodies full of life and spirits mount easily, and are hard to fall, whereas heavy bodies are hard to rise, and come down with greater velocity in proportion to their weight; but we find fortune every day acting just the reverse of this. -- Fates of Clergymen

The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable; for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

Small causes are sufficient to make a man uneasy when great ones are not in the way. For want of a block he will stumble at a straw. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

I must complain the cards are ill shuffled, till I have a good hand. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

Men who possess all the advantages of life, are in a state where there are many accidents to disorder and discompose, but few to please them. Thoughts on Various Subjects

"The want of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome." Thoughts on Religion (1768)

"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." Thoughts on Religion

"I conceive some scattered notions about a superior power to be of singular use for the common people, as furnishing excellent materials to keep children quiet when they grow peevish, and providing topics of amusement in a tedious winter-night." An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity (1708)

"If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel." Letter to Miss Vanhomrigh, 12-13 August (1720)

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

Complaint is the largest tribute heaven receives, and the sincerest part of our devotion. Thoughts on Various Subjects

...we are taught by the tritest maxim in the world that Religion being the best of things, its corruptions are likely to be the worst. ("Apology" Tale of a Tub and Other Works. World's Classics. London : Oxford U. Press, 1984 [1986], p.3.)

Whoever has a true value for Church and State, should avoid the extremes of Whig for the sake of the former and the extremes of Tory on account of the latter. - J.S. (quoted by Lecky)

Religion seems to have grown an infant with age, and requires miracles to nurse it, as it had in its infancy. Thoughts on Various Subjects

What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers because, whoever shares his thoughts with the public will convince them as he himself appears convinced. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

Physicians ought not to give their judgment of religion, for the same reason that butchers are not admitted to be jurors upon life and death. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

The motives of the best actions will not bear too strict an inquiry. It is allowed that the cause of most actions, good or bad, may he resolved into the love of ourselves; but the self-love of some men inclines them to please others, and the self-love of others is wholly employed in pleasing themselves. This makes the great distinction between virtue and vice. Religion is the best motive of all actions, yet religion is allowed to be the highest instance of self-love. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

One argument used to the disadvantage of Providence I take to be a very strong one in its defence. It is objected that storms and tempests, unfruitful seasons, serpents, spiders, flies, and other noxious or troublesome animals, with many more instances of the like kind, discover an imperfection in nature, because human life would be much easier without them; but the design of Providence may clearly be perceived in this proceeding. The motions of the sun and moon - in short, the whole system of the universe, as far as philosophers have been able to discover and observe, are in the utmost degree of regularity and perfection; but wherever God hath left to man the power of interposing a remedy by thought or labour, there he hath placed things in a state of imperfection, on purpose to stir up human industry, without which life would stagnate, or, indeed, rather, could not subsist at all: CURIS ACCUUNT MORTALIA CORDA. Thoughts on Various Subjects

The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclined men in the course of virtue, but seldom or never reclaims the vicious. Thoughts on Various Subjects

Laws penned with the utmost care and exactness, and in the vulgar language, are often perverted to wrong meanings; then why should we wonder that the Bible is so? Thoughts on Various Subjects

Lord M. What religion is he of?
Lord Sp. Why, he is an Anythingarian.
--Polite Conversation. Dialogue i.

"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 by water." --Polite Conversation, Dialogue ii

How inconsistent is man with himself! -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

If a man would 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! -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

"There is nothing in this world constant but inconstancy." Critical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind (1707)

... when a great genius appears in the world the dunces are all in confederacy against him -- Fates of Clergymen

When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice, when they will not so much as take warning? -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

Men are content to be laughed at for their wit, but not for their folly. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

I have know several persons of great fame for wisdom in public affairs and councils, governed by foolish servants. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

Some people take more care to hide their wisdom, than their folly. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

I have known men of the greatest cunning perpetually cheated. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

I knew three great Ministers, who could exactly compute and settle the accounts of a kingdom, but were wholly ignorant of their own economy. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

I have known great Ministers, distinguished for wit and learning, who preferred none but dunces. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

...as wit is the noblest and most useful gift of human nature, so humour is the most agreeable; and where these two enter far into the compositionof any work the will render it always acceptable to the world. "Apology," A Tale Of A Tub

... I cannot imagine why we should be at expense to furnish wit for succeeding ages, when the former have made no sort of provision for ours "Preface," A Tale Of A Tub

... it is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they are employed on as when they have lost their edge. "Preface," A Tale Of A Tub

Love of flattery in most men proceeds from the mean opinion they have of themselves; in women from the contrary. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

It is 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.
Cadenus and Vanessa.

Praise is the daughter of the present power. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

Where Young must torture his invention
To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
Poetry, a Rhapsody.

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. Thoughts on Various Subjects

Those entertainments and pleasures we most value in life, are such as dupe and play the wag with the senses. For, if we take an examination of what is generally understood by happiness, as it has respect either to the understanding or the senses, we shall find all its properties and adjuncts will herd under this short definition, that it is a perpetual possession of being well deceived. "A digression concerning madness," A TALE OF A TUB

such a man truly wise, creams off nature, leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up. This is the sublime and refined point of felicity, called, the possession of being well deceived; the serene peaceful state of being a fool among knaves. "A digression concerning madness," A Tale Of A Tub

Some men, under the notion of weeding out prejudices, eradicate virtue, honesty, and religion. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

"Man is not rational - merely capable of it." Thoughts on Various Subjects

I have known some men possessed of good qualities, which were very serviceable to others, but useless to themselves; like a sun-dial on the front of a house, to inform the neighbours and passengers, but not the owner within. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

Although men are accused for not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps as 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. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

A man seeing a wasp creeping into a vial filled with honey, that was hung on a fruit tree, said thus: "Why, thou sottish animal, art thou mad to go into that vial, where you see many hundred of your kind there dying in it before you?" "The reproach is just," answered the wasp, "but not from you men, who are so far from taking example by other people's follies, that you will not take warning by your own. If after falling several times into this vial, and escaping by chance, I should fall in again, I should then but resemble you." Thoughts on Various Subjects

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

"I am apt to think that, in the day of Judgment, there will be small allowance given to the wise for their want of morals, nor to the ignorant for their want of faith, because both are without excuse." Thoughts on Various Subjects

Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time. Thoughts on Various Subjects

When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the good side or circumstances of it; when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad ones. Thoughts on Various Subjects

A man would have but few spectators, if he offered to show for threepence how he could thrust a red-hot iron into a barrel of gunpowder, and it should not take fire. Thoughts on Various Subjects

Hobbes clearly proves that every creature
Lives in a state of war by nature.
Poetry, a Rhapsody.

Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

In the proportion that credulity is a more peaceful possession of the mind than curiosity; so far preferable is that wisdom, which converses about the surface, to that pretended philosophy which enters into the depth of things, and then comes gravely back with informations and discoveries, that in the inside they are good for nothing. "A digression concerning madness," A Tale Of A Tub

Princes in their infancy, childhood, and youth are said to discover prodigious parts and wit, to speak things that surprise and astonish. Strange, so many hopeful princes, and so many shameful kings! If they happen to die young, they would have been prodigies of wisdom and virtue. If they live, they are often prodigies indeed, but of another sort. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions, and consequently of no use to a good king or a good ministry; for which reason Courts are so overrun with politics. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

It is in disputes, as in armies, where the weaker side sets up false lights, and makes a great noise, to make the enemy believe them more numerous and strong than they really are. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

Law, in a free country, is, or ought to be, the determination of the majority of those who have property in land. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

For in Reason, all Government without the Consent of the Governed, is the very Definition of Slavery; But in Fact, Eleven Men well armed, will certainly subdue one single man in his Shirt. -- Drapier's Letters

"Thus, likewise, power is no blessing in itself, because private men bear less envy, and trouble, and anguish without it. But when it is employed to protect the innocent, to relieve the oppressed, and to punish the oppressor, then it becomes a great blessing." [often cited as "Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.] Sermon on Mutual Subjection (published 1744)

Kings are commonly said to have LONG HANDS; I wish they had as LONG EARS. Thoughts on Various Subjects

...the etymology of the name [of the judicial bench], which in the Phoenician tongue is a word of great signification, importing if literally interpreted, the place of sleep; but in common acceptation, a seat well bolstered and cushioned for the repose of old and gouty limbs: senes un in otia tuta recedent. "Sect. I." Tale of a Tub and Other Works. World's Classics. London : Oxford U. Press, 1984 [1986], p. 26

I never heard a finer piece of satire against lawyers than that of astrologers, when they pretend by rules of art to tell when a suit will end, and whether to the advantage of the plaintiff or defendant; thus making the matter depend entirely upon the influence of the stars, without the least regard to the merits of the cause.-- Thoughts on Various Subjects

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through. -- A Critical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind, 1707

	[see also:
	Laws are like spider's webs: 
	if some poor weak creature come 
	up against them, it is caught; 
	but a bigger one can break 
	through and get away.
	-- Solon (6th century  BC)
	
	Laws are generally found to be nets 
	of such a texture, as the little
	creep through, the great break through, 
	and the middle-sized are
	alone entangled in. 
	-- William Shenstone ]
	

The very same principle that influences a bully to break the windows of a whore who has jilted him, naturally stirs up a great prince to raise mighty armies, and dream of nothing but sieges, battles, and victories. "A digression concerning madness," A Tale Of A Tub

The same spirits which, in their superior progress would conquer a kingdom, descending upon the anus, conclude in a fistula. "A digression concerning madness," A Tale Of A Tub

The reason why so few marriages are happy, is, because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.-- Thoughts on Various Subjects

I have known men of great valour cowards to their wives. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

Oh! Celia, Celia, Celia shits! The Lady's Dressing Room

Lord! I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing. --Polite Conversation. Dialogue ii.

"Why every one as they like; as the good woman said when she kissed her cow." Polite Conversation [also attributed to Rabelais]

"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." Author's Preface, The Battle Of The Books

Satire is reckoned the easiest of all wit; but I take it to be otherwise in very bad times: for it is as hard to satirize well a man of distinguished vices, as to praise well a man of distinguished virtues. It is easy enough to do either to people of moderate characters. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

I have observed some satirists to use the public much at the rate that pedants do a naughty boy, ready horsed for discipline: first expostulate the case, then plead the necessity of the rod from great provocations, and conclude every period with a lash. Now, if I know anything of mankind, these gentlemen might very well spare their reproof and correction: for there is not, through all nature, another so callous and insensible a member as the world's posteriors, whether you apply to it the toe or the birch. "Preface," A Tale Of A Tub

Here [England] you may securely display your utmost rhetoric against mankind, in the face of the world; tell them, 'That all are gone astray, that there is none that doth good, no not one; that we live in the very dregs of time; that knavery and atheism are epidemic as the pox; that honesty is fled with Astræa; with any other commonplaces, equally new and eloquent, which are furnished by the splendida bilis. And when you have done, the whole audience, far from being offended, shall return you thanks as a deliverer of precious and useful truths. Nay, further, it is but to venture your lungs, and you may preach in Covent Garden against foppery and fornication, and something else: against pride, and dissimulation, and bribery, at White-Hall: you may expose rapine and injustice in the Inns of Court Chapel: and in a city pulpit be as fierce as you please against avarice, hypocrisy, and extortion. 'Tis but a ball bandied to and fro, and every man carries a racket about him to strike it from himself among the rest of the company. "Preface," A Tale Of A Tub

For the materials of panegyric being very few in number, have been long since exhausted. For, as health is but one thing, and has been always the same, whereas diseases are by thousands, besides new and daily additions; so, all the virtues that have been ever in mankind, are to be counted upon a few fingers, but his follies and vices are innumerable, and time adds hourly to the heap. "Preface," A Tale Of A Tub

... satire being levelled at all is never resented for an offence by any, since every individual person makes bold to understand it of others, and very wisely removes his particular part of the burden upon the shoulders of the world, which are broad enough and able to bear it. "Preface," A Tale Of A Tub

But I forget that I am expatiating on a subject wherein I have no concern, having neither a talent nor an inclination for satire. "Preface," A Tale Of A Tub

GOOD manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. -- A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding

Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy is the best bred in the company. -- A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding

As the best law is founded upon reason, so are the best manners. And as some lawyers have introduced unreasonable things into common law, so likewise many teachers have introduced absurd things into common good manners. -- A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding

One principal point of this art [good manners] is to suit our behaviour to the three several degrees of men; our superiors, our equals, and those below us. For instance, to press either of the two former to eat or drink is a breach of manners; but a farmer or a tradesman must be thus treated, or else it will be difficult to persuade them that they are welcome. -- A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding

Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners; without some one of these defects, no man will behave himself ill for want of experience; or of what, in the language of fools, is called knowing the world. -- A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding

I defy any one to assign an incident wherein reason will not direct us what we are to say or do in company, if we are not misled by pride or ill nature. -- A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding

"As the common forms of good manners were intended for regulating the conduct of those who have weak understandings; so they have been corrupted by the persons for whose use they were contrived. For these people have fallen into a needless and endless way of multiplying ceremonies, which have been extremely troublesome to those who practice them, and insupportable to everyone else: insomuch that wise men are often more uneasy at the over civility of these refiners, than they could possibly be in the conversations of peasants or mechanics." -- A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding

A footman may swear; but he cannot swear like a lord. He can swear as often: but can he swear with equal delicacy, propriety, and judgment? --Polite Conversation

"Faith, that's as well said, as if I had said it myself."Polite Conversation, Dialogue 2

Few are qualified to shine in company; but it is in most men's power to be agreeable. The reason, therefore, why conversation runs so low at present, is not the defect of understanding, but pride, vanity, ill-nature, affectation, singularity, positiveness, or some other vice, the effect of a wrong education. Thoughts on Various Subjects

The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter, and a scarcity of words; for whoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt, in speaking, to hesitate upon the choice of both; whereas common speakers have only one set of ideas, and one set of words to clothe them in, and these are always ready at the mouth. So people come faster out of a church when it is almost empty, than when a crowd is at the door. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

Natural elocution, although it may seem a paradox, usually springs from a barrenness of invention, and of words; by which men who have only one stock of notions upon every subject, and one set of phrases to express them in, they swim upon the superficies, and offer themselves on every occasion; therefore, men of much learning, and who know the compass of a language, are generally the worst talkers on a sudden, until much practice has inured and emboldened them; because they are confounded with plenty of matter, variety of notions, and of words, which they cannot readily choose, but are perplexed and entangled by too great a choice; which is no disadvantage in private conversation; where, on the other side, the talent of haranguing is, of all others, most insupportable. -- Hints Toward An Essay On Conversation)

"Neither can I feel joy at passing my days in Ireland;" Letter to Vanessa dated 8th June 1713

"What I did for this country [Ireland] was from profound hatred of tyranny and oppression. I believe the people of Lapland or the Hottentots cannot be so miserable a people as we." - J.S. (quoted by Lecky)

I do profess without affection, that your kind opinion of me as a patriot (since you call it so) is what I do not deserve; because what I do is owing to perfect rage and resentment, and the mortifying sight of slavery, folly, and baseness about me, among which I am forced to live. -- letter to Pope, 1 June 1728

"For God's sake, madam, don't say that in England for if you do, they will surely tax it." Swift responding to Lady Carteret's admiration for the quality of the air in Ireland. Hesketh Pearson,Lives of the Wits, 1962. http://w1.xrefer.com/entry/170009

It would be a noble achievement to abolish the Irish language in this kingdom, so far at least as to oblige all the natives to speak only English on every occasion of business... -- "An Answer to Several Letters Sent Me From Unknown Hands," 1729

Yet I cannot but highly esteem those gentlemen of Ireland, who with all the disadvantages of being exiles and strangers, have been able to distinguish themselves by their valour and conduct in so many parts of Europe, I think above all other nations, which ought to make the English ashamed of the reproaches they cast on the ignorance, the dullness, and the want of courage, in the Irish natives ... But the millions of oppressions they lie under, the tyranny of their landlords, the ridiculous zeal of their priests, and the general misery of the whole nation, have been enough to damp the best spirits under the sun. - letter to Charles Wogan, 1732

I am condemned to life in Ireland, and all the Court and Ministry did for me was to let me choose my station in the country where I am banished. -- Journal to Stella

I reckon no man is thoroughly miserable unless he be condemned to live in Ireland. ... do not let me die in a rage here like a poisoned rat in a hole. -- letter to Bolingbroke, 21 March (1730)

Remove me from this land of slaves,
Where all are fools, and all are knaves;
Where every knave and fool is bought,
Yet kindly sells himself for nought;
-- Ireland

Were not the People of Ireland born as free as those of England? How have they forfeited their Freedom? ... Am I a free-man in England, and do I become a Slave in six Hours by crossing the Channel? -- Drapier's Letters

As to Ireland, they [the English] know little more than they do of Mexico; further than that it is a Country subject to the King of England, full of Boggs, inhabited by wild Irish Papists; who are kept in Awe by mercenary Troops sent from thence, and their general opinion is, that it were better for England if this whole Island were sunk in the Sea, For, they have a Tradition, that every Forty Years there must be a Rebellion in Ireland. -- Drapier's Letters

I never was in hast before
To reach that slavish hateful shore.
Holyhead Journal, 1727

... liberty, a possession always understood by the British nation to be the inheritance of a human creature. letter to the Earl of Peterborough Apr. 28, 1726

all persons born in Ireland are called and treated as Irishmen, although their fathers and grandfather were born in England; and their predecessors have been conquerors of Ireland, it is humbly conceived they ought to be on as good a foot as any subjects of Britain, according to the practice of all other nations, and particularily the Greeks and Romans. -- Letter to Lord Peterborough, 28 April 1726

A people long used to hardships lose by degrees the very notions of liberty; they look upon themselves as creatures of mercy, and that all impositions laid on them by a strong hand are, in the phrase of the report, legal and obligatory. -- Drapier's Letters (IV)

"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." A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Ireland from being a Burden to their Parents or Country (1729)

"Burn everything that comes from England except its coal" A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture (1720)

"She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitch fork." Polite Conversation, Dialogue 1.

It has been affirmed that originally he was not altogether devoid of wit, till it was extruded from his head to make way for other men's thoughts." 'character' of Narcissus Marsh, Provost of Trinity, quoted by Glendinning p. 21.

If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is he keeps his at the same time. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

I mean you lie -- under a mistake. --Polite Conversation. Dialogue i.

She's no chicken; she's on the wrong side of thirty, if she be a day. --Polite Conversation. Dialogue i.

An idle reason lessens the weight of the good one you gave before. -- Thoughts on Various Subjects

"I myself, the author of these momentous truths, am a person, whose imaginations are hard-mouthed, and exceedingly disposed to run away with his reason, which I have observed from long experience to be a very light rider, and easily shook off;" Tale of a Tub, section IX