text:
Edward Young

Edward Young (c. 3 July 1683 – April 5, 1765) was an English poet, best remembered for Night-Thoughts.

Quotes

 * In records that defy the tooth of time.
 * The Statesman's Creed.

 * Ah! what is human life? How, like the dial's tardy-moving shade, Day after day slides from us unperceiv'd! The cunning fugitive is swift by stealth; Too subtle is the movement to be seen; Yet soon the hour is up—and we are gone.
 * Busiris (1719), Act V, sc. i.

 * Great let me call him, for he conquered me.
 * The Revenge (1721), Act I, sc. i.

 * Life is the desert, life the solitude; Death joins us to the great majority.
 * The Revenge, Act IV, sc. i.

 * Souls made of fire, and children of the sun, With whom revenge is virtue.
 * The Revenge, Act V, sc. ii.

 * The blood will follow where the knife is driven, The flesh will quiver where the pincers tear.
 * The Revenge, Act V, sc. ii.

 * In youth, what disappointments of our own making: in age, what disappointments from the nature of things.
 * A Vindication of Providence; or, A True Estimate of Human Life (1728).

 * The man that makes a character makes foes.
 * To Mr. Pope, epistle I, l. 28 (1730).

 * Their feet through faithless leather met the dirt, And oftener chang'd their principles than shirt.
 * To Mr. Pope, epistle I, l. 277.

 * As Love alone can exquisitely bless, Love only feels the marvellous of pain; Opens new veins of torture in the soul, And wakes the nerve where agonies are born.
 * The Brothers (1753), Act V, scene i.

 * Too low they build who build beneath the stars.
 * Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 206.

 * He weeps! the falling drop puts out the sun; He sighs! the sigh earth's deep foundation shakes. If in His love so terrible, what then His wrath inflamed?
 * Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 271.

 * Accept a miracle instead of wit,— See two dull lines with Stanhope's pencil writ.
 * Lines written with the Diamond Pencil of Lord Chesterfield; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

 * Time elaborately thrown away.
 * The Last Day, book i; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

 * There buds the promise of celestial worth.
 * The Last Day, book iii; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

 * And friend received with thumps upon the back.
 * Universal Passion; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Love of Fame (1725-1728)

 * When the Law shows her teeth, but dares not bite.
 * Satire I, l. 17.

 * The love of praise, howe'er concealed by art, Reigns more or less, and glows in ev'ry heart.
 * Satire I, l. 51.

 * Some for renown, on scraps of learning dote, And think they grow immortal as they quote.
 * Satire I, l. 89.

 * Titles are marks of honest men, and wise; The fool or knave that wears a title lies.
 * Satire I, l. 145.

 * They that on glorious ancestors enlarge, Produce their debt instead of their discharge.
 * Satire I, l. 147.

 * None think the great unhappy but the great.
 * Satire I, l. 238.

 * Unlearned men of books assume the care, As eunuchs are the guardians of the fair.
 * Satire II, l. 83.

 * The booby father craves a booby son, And by Heaven’s blessing thinks himself undone.
 * Satire II, l. 165.

 * Where Nature’s end of language is declin’d, And men talk only to conceal the mind.
 * Satire II, l. 207.

 * Be wise with speed; A fool at forty is a fool indeed.
 * Satire II, l. 282.

 * And waste their music on the savage race.
 * Satire V, l. 228.

 * With skill she vibrates her eternal tongue, Forever most divinely in the wrong.
 * Satire VI, l. 105.

 * For her own breakfast she'll project a scheme, Nor take her tea without a strategem.
 * Satire VI, l. 187.

 * Think naught a trifle, though it small appear; Small sands the mountain, moments make the year, And trifles life.
 * Satire VI, l. 208.

 * One to destroy, is murder by the law; And gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe; To murder thousands takes a specious name, War's glorious art, and gives immortal fame.
 * Satire VII, l. 55.

 * How commentators each dark passage shun, And hold their farthing candle to the sun.
 * Satire VII, l. 97.

Night I

 * Tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep!
 * Line 1.

 * Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne, In rayless majesty, now stretches forth Her leaden scepter o'er a slumbering world.
 * Line 18.

 * Creation sleeps! 'Tis as the general pulse Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause; An awful pause! prophetic of her end.
 * Line 23.

 * On reason build resolve, that column of true majesty in man.
 * Line 30.

 * The bell strikes one. We take no note of time But from its loss.
 * Line 55.

 * Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour.
 * Line 67.

 * An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave; Legions of angels can't confine me there.
 * Line 89.

 * To waft a feather or to drown a fly.
 * Line 154.

 * Insatiate archer! could not one suffice? Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain; And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had filled her horn.
 * Line 212.

 * Be wise today; 'tis madness to defer.
 * Line 390.

 * Procrastination is the thief of time.
 * Line 393.

 * At thirty, man suspects himself a fool; Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan; At fifty chides his infamous delay, Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve; In all the magnanimity of thought Resolves, and re-resolves; then dies the same.
 * Line 417.

 * All men think all men mortal but themselves.
 * Line 424.

Night II

 * He mourns the dead who lives as they desire.
 * Line 24.

 * And what its worth, ask death-beds; they can tell.
 * Line 51.

 * Thy purpose firm is equal to the deed: Who does the best his circumstance allows Does well, acts nobly; angels could no more.
 * Line 90.

 * "I've lost a day!"—the prince who nobly cried, Had been an emperor without his crown.
 * Line 99. Suetonius says of the Emperor Titus: "Once at supper, reflecting that he had done nothing for any that day, he broke out into that memorable and justly admired saying, ‘My friends, I have lost a day!'" Suetonius, Lives of the Twelve Cæsars (translation by Alexander Thomson).

 * Ah, how unjust to Nature and himself Is thoughtless, thankless, inconsistent man!
 * Line 112.

 * Life's cares are comforts; such by Heav'n design'd; He that hath none must make them, or be wretched.
 * Line 160.

 * The spirit walks of every day deceased.
 * Line 180.

 * Time flies, death urges, knells call, Heaven invites, Hell threatens.
 * Line 292.

 * Whose yesterdays look backwards with a smile.
 * Line 334.

 * 'Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours, And ask them what report they bore to heaven.
 * Line 376.

 * Thoughts shut up want air, And spoil, like bales unopen’d to the sun.
 * Line 466.

 * A friend is worth all hazards we can run.
 * Line 571.

 * Friendship's the wine of life; but friendship new (Not such was his) is neither strong nor pure.
 * Line 582.

 * How blessings brighten as they take their flight!
 * Line 602.

 * The chamber where the good man meets his fate Is privileg’d beyond the common walk Of virtuous life, quite in the verge of heaven.
 * Line 633.

 * A death-bed ’s a detector of the heart.
 * Line 641.

 * Virtue alone has majesty in death.
 * Line 650.

Night III

 * Woes cluster. Rare are solitary woes; They love a train, they tread each other’s heel.
 * Line 63.

 * Beautiful as sweet! And young as beautiful! and soft as young! And gay as soft! and innocent as gay.
 * Line 81.

 * Lovely in death the beauteous ruin lay; And if in death still lovely, lovelier there; Far lovelier! pity swells the tide of love.
 * Line 104.

 * Heaven’s Sovereign saves all beings but himself That hideous sight,—a naked human heart.
 * Line 226.

 * ... life is most enjoy'd when courted least, most worth, when disesteemed,...
 * Line 410

Night IV

 * The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave, The deep damp vault, the darkness and the worm.
 * Line 10.

 * Man makes a death which Nature never made.
 * Line 15.

 * And feels a thousand deaths in fearing one.
 * Line 17.

 * Wishing, of all employments, is the worst.
 * Line 71.

 * Man wants little, nor that little long.
 * Line 118.

 * A God all mercy is a God unjust.
 * Line 233.

 * ’Tis impious in a good man to be sad
 * Line 676.

 * A Christian is the highest style of man.
 * Line 788.

 * Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die.
 * Line 843.

Night V

 * By night an atheist half believes a God.
 * Line 177.

 * Less base the fear of death than fear of life.
 * Line 441.

 * A soul without reflection, like a pile Without inhabitant, to ruin runs.
 * Line 596.

 * Early, bright, transient, chaste as morning dew, She sparkled, was exhal'd and went to heaven.
 * Line 600.

 * We see time’s furrows on another’s brow, And death intrench’d, preparing his assault; How few themselves in that just mirror see!
 * Line 627.

 * Like our shadows, Our wishes lengthen as our sun declines.
 * Line 661.

 * While man is growing, life is in decrease; And cradles rock us nearer to the tomb. Our birth is nothing but our death begun.
 * Line 717.

 * That life is long which answers life's great end.
 * Line 773.

 * The man of wisdom is the man of years.
 * Line 775.

 * Death loves a shining mark, a signal blow.
 * Line 1011.

Night VI

 * Revere thyself, and yet thyself despise.
 * Line 128.

 * Pygmies are pygmies still, though percht on Alps; And pyramids are pyramids in vales. Each man makes his own stature, builds himself. Virtue alone outbuilds the Pyramids; Her monuments shall last when Egypt’s fall.
 * Line 309.

 * Ambition! powerful source of good and ill!
 * Line 399.

 * Much learning shows how little mortals know; Much wealth, how little worldlings can enjoy.
 * Line 519.

 * And all may do what has by man been done.
 * Line 606.

Night VII

 * The man that blushes is not quite a brute.
 * Line 496.

 * What ardently we wish we soon believe.
 * Line 1311.

Night VIII

 * Too low they build who build beneath the stars.
 * Line 215.

 * Truth never was indebted to a lie.
 * Line 587.

 * Prayer ardent opens heaven.
 * Line 721.

 * The house of laughter makes a house of woe.
 * Line 757.

 * A man of pleasure is a man of pains.
 * Line 793.

 * To frown at pleasure, and to smile in pain.
 * Line 1045.

Night IX

 * Final Ruin fiercely drives Her plowshare o'er creation.
 * Line 167. Compare Robert Burns, To a Mountain Daisy: "Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives elate / Full on thy bloom".

 * 'T is elder Scripture, writ by God's own hand,— Scripture authentic! uncorrupt by man.
 * Line 644.

 * An undevout astronomer is mad.
 * Line 771.

 * The course of Nature is the art of God.
 * Line 1267.

Conjectures on Original Composition (1759)

 * Born Originals - how comes it to pass that we die Copies?
 * London 1759, p. 42 books.google

 * There is something in Poetry beyond Prose-reason; there are Mysteries in it not to be explained, but admired; which render mere Prose-men Infidels to their Divinity.
 * London 1759, p. 28 books.google

 * For Rules, like Crutches, are a needful Aid to the Lame, tho' an impediment to the Strong.
 * London 1759, p. 28 books.google

Misattributed

 * By all means use some time to be alone.
 * A slight misquotation of George Herbert "The Church Porch", line 145: "By all means use sometimes to be alone", in The Temple (1633).

 * The future... seems to me no unified dream but a mince pie, long in the baking, never quite done.
 * Widely attributed to Edward Young, but in fact written by E. B. White in Harper's Magazine (December 1940), and reprinted in his One Man's Meat (1942).

 * They only babble who practise not reflection.
 * From Richard Brinsley Sheridan's Pizarro, Act I, sc. i.

 * Tomorrow is a satire on today, And shows its weakness.
 * This is a quotation from "The Old Man's Relapse", a poem addressed to Edward Young, but written by Lord Melcombe.

title: Edward Young


text:
Josh Billings

Henry Wheeler Shaw (21 April 1818 – 14 October 1885), most famous under his pen name Josh Billings, was an American humorist. He was perhaps the second most famous humor writer and lecturer in the United States in the 2nd half of the 19th century, after Mark Twain, although his reputation has not fared so well with later generations.

Quotes

 * Many of the statements of Billings are often quoted in paraphrased form (rendered into standardized English rather than with the peculiar forms of his original writings).

 * The wheel that squeaks the loudest Is the one that gets the grease.
 * The Kicker

 * I honestly beleave it iz better tew know nothing than two know what ain't so.
 * "Sollum Thoughts". in Everybody's Friend: Josh Billing's Encyclopedia & Proverbial Philosophy of Wit & Humor (1874)
 * Variant: "I honestly believe it is better to know nothing than to know what ain't so."
 * Compare with letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Reverend James Madison of 19 July 1788, "It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong."

 * The lion and the lamb may, possibly, sumtime lay down in this world together for a fu minnits, but when the lion kums tew git up, the lamb will be missing.
 * Affurisms: Slips of the Pen The Complete Works of Josh Billings (1876)

 * It iz comparitively eazy tew repent ov the sins that we hav committed, but tew repent ov thoze which we intend to commit, is asking tew mutch ov enny man, now days.
 * Affurisms: Jews Harps, Josh Billings' Wit and Humor (1874)

 * Tew bring up a child in the wa he should go—travel that wa yourself.
 * Josh Billings, Hiz Sayings, Chapter 78: "Domestik Receipts in Full" (1865)

 * Don't mistake vivacity for wit, thare iz about az mutch difference az thare iz between lightning and a lightning bug.
 * Josh Billings' Old Farmer's Allminax, "January 1871" (1870)

 * Most people when they cum tew yu for advice cum tew hav their own opinyuns strengthened, not correkted.
 * "Affurisms: Plum Pits," Josh Billings' Wit and Humor (1874)

 * As in a game ov cards, so in the game ov life, we must play what is dealt tew us, and the glory consists, not so mutch in winning, as in playing a poor hand well.
 * Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868), Chapter XXIV: "Perkussion Caps", p. 89; republished in The Complete Works of Josh Billings (1876), Chapter 141: "Ods and Ens", p. 248. Often paraphrased as "Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well."

Affurisms. From Josh Billings: His Sayings (1865)

 * A secret ceases to be a secret if it is once confided—it is like a dollar bill, once broken, it is never a dollar again.

 * Love is like the measles; we can't have it bad but once, and the later in life we have it the tougher it goes with us.

 * Put an Englishman into the garden of Eden, and he would find fault with the whole blasted concern; put a Yankee in, and he would see where he could alter it to advantage; put an Irishman in, and he would want to boss the thing; put a Dutchman in, and he would proceed to plant it.

 * Better make a weak man your enemy than your friend.

 * Nature never makes blunders; when she makes a fool she means it.

 * I don't care how much a man talks, if he only says it in a few words.

 * As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.

 * Poverty is the stepmother of genius.

 * Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just, But four times he who gets his blow in fust

 * When a man gits tew talking about himself, he seldum fails tew be eloquent, and often reaches the sublime.

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

 * "Familiarity breeds kontempt." This only applies tew men, not tew hot bukwheat slapkakes, well buttered and sugared.

 * Dangers are sum like a kold bath, very dangerous while you stand stripped on the bank, but often not only harmless, but invigorating, if you pitch into them.

 * I don't beleave in fighting; i am solemly aginst it; but if a man gits teu fighting, i am also solemly aginst hiz gitting licked. After a fight iz once opened, all the virtew thare iz in it iz tew lick the other party.

 * I don't beleaf in bad luck being sot for a man, like a trap, but i hav known lots ov folks, who if thare waz enny fust rate bad luck lieing around loose, would be sure tew git one foot in it enny how.

 * I don't kno az i want tew bet enny money, and giv odds, on the man, who iz alwus anxious tew pray out loud, every chance he kan git.

 * It iz a darned sight eazier tew find six men who kan tell exactly how a thing ought tew be did than tew find one who will do it.

 * If we giv up our minds tew little things we never shall be fit for big ones. I knew a man once who could ketch more flies with one swoop ov his hand than enny boddy else could, and he want good at ennything else.

 * The man who pitys everyboddy, wants watching, for the chances are that he iz gitting phatt slily on other peoples misfortunes.

 * Thare iz but phew people in this world underrated.

 * There iz no more real satisfackshun, in laying up in yure buzzum an injury than thare iz in stuffing a dead hornet, who haz stung you, and keeping him tew look at.

 * If we would all ov us take kare ov our own souls, and let our nabors alone, thare would be less time lost, and more souls saved.

 * If thare iz enny human being that i thoroughly loath, it iz the one who haz nothing tew boast ov but hiz money--a mere pimp tew hiz welth.

 * Pedantry iz the science ov investing what little yu know in one kind ov perfumery, and insisting upon sticking that under every man's knose whom you meet.

 * This setting down and folding our arms, and waiting for sumthing tew turn up, iz just about az rich a speckulashun az going out into a four hundred acre lot, setting down on a sharp stone, with a pail between our knees, and waiting for a cow tew back up and be milked.

 * Love haz a most vorashus appetight, but a poor digestion, what it feeds on most alwus distresses it. Prudes, are coquets, gone to seed. It iz our duty tew pray for them who revile and persekute us, but i dont kno az we are obliged tew let them kno it.

 * Thare are people who dont do ennything but watch their simptoms. I have seen dogs ackt just az sensible, i hav seen a rat terrier watch the simptoms ov a knot hole, in a board fence, all day, for sum rat tew cum out, but no rat didn't cum out.

 * When a doktor looks me square in the face and kant see no money in me, then i am happy.

 * The hardest thing that enny man kan do iz tew fall down on the ice when it iz wet, and get up and praze the Lord.

 * Yung man, don't grind yure scythe all on one side!

 * Politeness iz often wasted, but it iz a good and cheap mistake tew make.

 * Cunning iz very apt tew outwit itself. The man who turned the boat over and got under it tew keep out ov the rain, waz one ov this kind.

 * I don't suppoze thare haz ever lived a man without a single virtew. Even Judas Iskariot "went and hanged himself."

 * About one haff the pitty in this world iz not the result ov sorrow, but satisfackshun that it aint our hoss that haz had hiz leg broke.

 * I dont kno az it iz a very difficult thing tew be a good injun up in heaven, but tew cum down here and be a good injun, iz just whare the tite spot cums in.

 * Genuine grief iz like penitence, not klamorous but subdued; sorrow from the hous tops and penitence in a market place shows more ambishun than piety.

 * The grate desire ov mi life iz tew amuze sumboddy. I had rather be able to set the multiplikashun table tew sum lively tune than tew hav bin the author ov it.

 * I rather admire the insolent civility ov a bull-tarrier, who only growls when i pass by him, but i never did like it in a man.

 * Thare are but dredful phew people who kan talk ten minnits tew yu without lugging into the conversashun their bak or stummuk akes.

 * I kno plenty ov folks who are so kondem kontrary, that if they should fall into the river, they would insist uopon floating up stream.

 * I wouldn't undertake tew korrekt a mans sektarian views enny quicker than i would tell him which road tew take at a 4 corners, when i didn't know miself which waz the right one.

 * Every man should kno sumthing ov law--if he knows enuff tew keep out ov it, he iz a prety good lawyer.

 * Men are often praized for their sagassity, but all the fore sight in the world kant tell a dubble yelked egg untill it iz broken.

 * Natur duz awl her big and little jobs without making enny furse; the earth goes around the sun, the moon changes, the eklipses, and the pollywog, silently and taillessly, bekums a frog, but man kant even deliver a small-sized 4th ov July orashun without knocking down a mountain or two, and tareing up three or four primeval forests by the bleeding rutes.

 * Mankind loves misterys--a hole in the ground, excites mor wonder than a star in the heavens.

 * Them folks who are sudden, aint apt tew be solid; lively streams are alwus shallow.

 * Truth dont require the aid ov elegant and high stepping words, tew express its force, or buty, it iz like water, tastes better out ov a wooden bucket, than it duz out ov a golden goblet.

 * Too mutch religion iz wuss than none at all. Yu kant sho me a kuntry that haz existed yet, whare the people, all ov them, professed one religion and persekuted all other kinds, but what the religion ruined the country.

 * Menny people spend their time trieing tew find the hole whare sin got into this world--if two men brake through the ice into a mill pond, they had better hunt for sum good hole tew git out, rather than git into a long argument about the hole they cum tew fall in.

 * Thare iz a grate deal ov charity in this world so koldly rendered that it fairly hurts, it iz like lifting a drowning man out ov the water bi the hair ov the hed, and then letting him drop on the ground.

 * I don't rekoleckt now ov ever hearing ov two dogs fiteing unless thare waz a man or two around.

 * There iz only one good substitute for the endearments ov a sister, and that iz the endearments ov sum other pheller's sister.

 * Misplaced charity iz a good blunder tew make. If yu want tew git a good general idea ov a man's karakter find out from him what hiz opinion ov his nabor iz.

 * I hav studdyed mi own karakter, and mi own impulses for 39 years clussly, and i kant tell to day (to save a bet) whether i am an honest and trew man or not--if thare iz enny boddy who knows about this matter i wish they would address me a letter, enklosing a postage blister.

 * Thare iz sich a thing az being alwus too quick--i am one ov that kind miself, i alwus miss a rale rode train bi being thare a haff an our too soon.

 * Misanthropy don't pay--thare aint no man living whoze hate the world cares one cuss for.

 * Poor human natur iz too full ov its own grievances tew have enny pitty to spare,--if yu show a man a big bile on yure arm, he will tell yu he had one twice az big az that, on the same spot, last year.

 * If I had 4 fust rate dogs i would name the best one "Doubtful" and the other 3 "Useless".

 * I beleave in the universal salvashun ov men, but I want tew pick the men.

 * Awl human happiness is conservatiff; 2 thirds ov the pleasure in sliding down hill consists in drawing the sled back. I don't serpoze thare would be enny fun in sliding down a hill 34 miles long.

 * The man who kan ware a paper collar a hole week and keap, it klean, aint fit for enny thing else.

 * When i cum akrost people who are perfeklty krazy for ventilashun, i say to miself, "that kritter was brought up in a windmill."

 * Ventilashun iz a good thing, but when a man kant lay down and sleep in a 10 aker lot without taking down two lengths ov fence to let the wind in he iz alltogether too airish.

 * What should we do if it want for the churches? Thare iz a plenty ov people who kant worship God only in a church. If they were out in a field on the Sabbath day they would at once bekum lawless, and fall to digging out woodchucks or hunting for bumblebees' nests.

 * Giv every one you meet, my boy, the time ov day and halff the road, and if that dont make him civil dont waste enny more fragrance on the cuss.

 * I hav often heard ov men who had bekum disgusted with the world, and retired into solitude; but i hav never heard ov a kommitty ov our fust citizens waiting on them and asking them tew kum bak.

 * I think that a hen who undertakes tew lay 2 eggs a day must necessarily neglekt sum other branch ov bizzness.

 * I dont never hav enny trouble in regulating mi own kondukt, but tew keep other pholks straight iz what bothers me.

 * Rather than not hav faith in enny thing, i am willing tew be beat 9 times out ov 10.

 * I hate grate talkers; i had rather hav a swarm of bees lite onto me.

 * Prejudice iz a hous plant which iz very apt tew wither if yu take it out doors amungst pholks.

 * I never hav seen a bigot yet but what had a small and apparently braneless hed--bit i hain't seen all the bigots, yu know.

 * Thare iz this mutch kan be sed in favour ov good-breeding, it iz the only thing that kan make a phool endurable.

 * Marrying for buty iz a poor spekulashun, for enny man who sees yure wife, has got just about az mutch stock in her as yu have.

 * I had rather be a pot-bellied seed cowcumber, flung carelessly on a wood pile to ripen, than tew be an old bachelor.

 * I hope i shall never hav so much reputashun that i shan't feel obliged to be alwus civil.

 * When i see a poor, and proud aristokrat, purtiklar about punktillio, he alwus puts me in mind ov a drunken man, trieing tew walk a crack.

 * Take awl the prophecys that hav cum tew pass, and awl that hav caught on the center, and failed tew cum tew time, and make them up in an average, and yer will find, that buying stock, on the Codfish Bank ov Nufoundland, at 50 per cent, for a rise, iz, in comparison, a good spekulatiff bizziness.

 * 7 per cent haz no rest, nor no religion, it works nights, and Sundays, and even wet days.

 * We are happy in this world just in proporshun as we make others happy--i stand reddy tew bet 50 dollars on this saying.

 * A man's reputashun iz something like hiz coat, thare iz certain kemikals that will take the stains and grease spots out ov it, but it alwus haz a second-handed kind ov a look, and generally smells strong ov the kemikals.

 * The wealth ov a person should be estimated, not bi the amount he haz, but bi the use he makes ov it.

 * Their is one advantage in a plurality of wifes; tha fite each other, insted ov their husbands.

 * I am poor, and I am glad that i am, for i find that wealth makes more people mean than it duz generous.

 * As a gineral thing, when a woman wares the britches, she has a good rite tew them.

 * There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness. (p. 235)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Josh Billings


text:
Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish writer and satirist. Acclaimed as one of the finest prose satirists in the English language, he was also well known for his poetry and essays.
 * See also:
 * Gulliver's Travels

Quotes

 * When I behold this I sighed, and said within myself, "Surely mortal man is a broomstick!" Nature sent him into the world strong and lusty, in a thriving condition, wearing his own hair on his head, the proper branches of this reasoning vegetable, till the axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs, and left him a withered trunk; he then flies to art, and puts on a periwig, valuing himself upon an unnatural bundle of hairs, all covered with powder, that never grew on his head; but now should this our broomstick pretend to enter the scene, proud of those birchen spoils it never bore, and all covered with dust, through the sweepings of the finest lady's chamber, we should be apt to ridicule and despise its vanity. Partial judges that we are of our own excellencies, and other men's defaults!
 * Meditation on a Broomstick (1703–1710)

 * Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.
 * The Battle of the Books, preface (1704)

 * 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, preface (1704)

 * There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake, though all the World sees them to be in downright nonsense.
 * The Tatler No. 63 (September 1709)

 * Raillery was to say something that at first appeared a reproach or reflection; but, by some turn of wit unexpected and surprising, ended always in a compliment, and to the advantage of the person it was addressed to. And surely one of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish we had rather left unsaid; nor can there anything be well more contrary to the ends for which people meet together, than to part unsatisfied with each other or themselves.
 * Hints Toward an Essay on Conversation (1709)

 * 'Tis very warm weather when one's in bed.
 * Journal to Stella (November 8, 1710)

 * Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect: like a man, who hath thought of a good repartee when the discourse is changed, or the company parted; or like a physician, who hath found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.
 * The Examiner No. XIV (Thursday, November 9th, 1710)

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

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

 * …one enemy can do more hurt, than ten friends can do good.
 * Journal to Stella (30 June, 1711)

 * But nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches, as to conceive how others can be in want.
 * A Preface to the Bishop of Sarum's Introduction to the Third Volume of the History of the Reformation of the Church of England (8 December, 1713)

 * '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.
 * Cadenus and Vanessa (1713)

 * Proper words in proper places, make the true definition of a style.
 * Letter to a Young Clergyman (January 9, 1720)

 * Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired: for in the course of things, men always grow vicious before they become unbelievers; but if you would once convince the town or country profligate, by topics drawn from the view of their own quiet, reputation, health, and advantage, their infidelity would soon drop off: This I confess is no easy task, because it is almost in a literal sense, to fight with beasts.
 * Letter to a Young Clergyman (January 9, 1720), on proving Christianity to unbelievers

 * 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 (August 12, 1720)

 * So weak thou art, that fools thy power despise; And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise.
 * To Love, found in Miss Vanhomrigh's desk after her death, in Swift's handwriting

 * 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.
 * The Drapier's Letters, letter iv (13 October, 1724)

 * Libertas et natale solum: Fine words! I wonder where you stole 'em.
 * Verses Occasioned by Whitshed's Motto on his Coach (1724); the Latin indicates "liberty and my native land", and Whitshed was a chief justice enraged by The Drapier's Letters

 * A set of phrases learnt by rote; A passion for a scarlet coat; When at a play to laugh, or cry, Yet cannot tell the reason why: Never to hold her tongue a minute; While all she prates has nothing in it.
 * The Furniture of a Woman's Mind (1727)

 * For conversation well endued; She calls it witty to be rude; And, placing raillery in railing, Will tell aloud your greatest failing.
 * The Furniture of a Woman's Mind (1727)

 * Those dreams that on the silent night intrude, And with false flitting shapes our minds delude … are mere productions of the brain. And fools consult interpreters in vain.
 * On Dreams (1727)

 * This evil fortune, which generally attends extraordinary men in the management of great affairs, has been imputed to divers causes, that need not be here set down, when so obvious a one occurs, if what a certain writer observes be true, that when a great genius appears in the world the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
 * Essay on the Fates of Clergymen (1728)

 * Not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.
 * Letter to Bolingbroke (March 21, 1729); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

 * 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 (1729)

 * A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.
 * A Modest Proposal (1729)

 * Yet malice never was his aim; He lashed the vice but spared the name. No individual could resent, Where thousands equally were meant. His satire points at no defect But what all mortals may correct; For he abhorred that senseless tribe Who call it humor when they gibe.
 * Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift (1731), l. 459

 * Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible.
 * Thoughts on various subjects (Further thoughts on various subjects) (1745)

 * Then gave him some familiar Thumps, A College Joke to cure the Dumps.
 * Cassinus and Peter: A Tragical Elegy (1734); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

 * Conversation is but carving! Give no more to every guest Than he's able to digest. Give him always of the prime, And but little at a time. Carve to all but just enough, Let them neither starve nor stuff, And that you may have your due, Let your neighbor carve for you.
 * Conversation

 * Under an oak, in stormy weather, I joined this rogue and whore together; And none but he who rules the thunder Can put this rogue and whore asunder.
 * Marriage Certificate. From the Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes, James Sutherland, ed. (1975), no. 77

 * Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy is the best bred in the company.
 * A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding (1754, published posthumously)

 * Pedantry is properly the over-rating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to.
 * A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding

 * Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.
 * A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding

 * 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.
 * A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding

 * Nothing is so great an instance of ill manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; if you flatter only one or two, you affront the rest.
 * Hints on Good Manners

 * 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 (1765), published posthumously

 * Violent zeal for truth hath an hundred to one odds to be either petulancy, ambition, or pride.
 * Thoughts on Religion

 * I shall be like that tree; I shall die from the top.
 * Predicting that he would go senile, as quoted in The Highway of Letters and its Echos of Famous Footsteps (1893) by Thomas Archer, p. 380

 * Reason is a very light rider and easily shook off.
 * As quoted in The World's Laconics : Or, The Best Thoughts Of The Best Authors (1827) by Johan TImbs, p. 25

 * Hail fellow, well met.
 * My Lady's Lamentation, The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. II, edited by William Ernst Browning (1910); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

 * I 've often wish'd 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, book ii. Sat. 6.; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

 * How we apples swim!
 * Brother Protestants; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

 * I have employed my time, besides 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. I like the scheme of our meeting after distresses and dispersions; but 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 September 1725)

A Tale of a Tub (1704)

 * It is a maxim, that those to whom everybody allows the second place have an undoubted title to the first.
 * Dedication

 * Seamen have a custom, when they meet a whale, to fling him out an empty tub by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the ship.
 * Preface

 * 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 of wit or sublime.
 * Preface

 * Bread is the staff of life.
 * Preface

 * 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 often when there is nothing in the world at the bottom besides dryness and dirt, though it be but a yard and a-half under-ground, it shall pass, however, for wondrous deep upon no wiser reason than because it is wondrous dark

 * Books, the children of the brain.
 * Sect. 1

 * As boys do sparrows, with flinging salt upon their tails.
 * Sect. 7

 * He made it a part of his religion never to say grace to his meat.
 * Sect. 11

A Tritical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind (1707)

 * A Tritical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind (1707)

 * Laws are like Cobwebs which may catch small Flies, but let Wasps and Hornets break through. But in Oratory the greatest Art is to hide Art.

 * ALL Rivers go to the Sea, but none return from it. Xerxes wept when he beheld his Army, to consider that in less than a Hundred Years they would be all Dead. Anacreon was' Choakt with a Grape-stone, and violent Joy Kills as well as violent Grief. There is nothing in this World constant but Inconstancy; yet Plato thought that if Virtue would appear to the World in her own native Dress, all Men would be Enamoured with her. But now since Interest governs the World, and Men neglect the Golden Mean, Jupiter himself, if he came on the Earth would be Despised, unless it were as he did to Danae in a Golden Shower. For Men nowadays Worship the Rising Sun, and not the Setting.

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

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

 * Every man desires to live long, but no man would be old.

 * A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.

 * What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not we are told expressly: that they neither marry, nor are given in marriage.

 * The Stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.

 * The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable; for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.

 * The latter part of a wise man’s life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former.

 * Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and orators, because he that would obtrude his thoughts and reasons upon a multitude, will convince others the more, as he appears convinced himself.

 * 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.

 * Men are contented to be laughed at for their wit, but not for their folly.

 * Although men are accused of 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.

 * Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping.

 * The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.

 * Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.

 * Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age…

 * I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.

 * No wise man ever wished to be younger.

 * The Bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.

 * Complaint is the largest tribute heaven receives, and the sincerest part of our devotion.

 * When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

 * The two maxims of any great man at court are always to keep his countenance and never to keep his word.

Gulliver's Travels (1726)

 * He is taller by almost the breadth of my nail, than any of his court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into the beholders.
 * On the Emperor of Lilliput, in Voyage to Lilliput, Ch. 2

 * I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.
 * Voyage to Brobdingnag, Ch. 6

 * And he gave it for his opinion, that whosoever 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.
 * Voyage to Brobdingnag, Ch. 7

 * He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers.
 * Voyage to Laputa, Ch. 5

 * I said the thing which was not. (For they have no word in their language to express lying or falsehood.)
 * Voyage to Houyhnhnms, Ch. 3

 * Poor Nations are hungry, and rich Nations are proud, and Pride and Hunger will ever be at Variance.
 * Voyage to Houyhnhnms, Ch. 5

 * It is a maxim among lawyers that whatever hath been done before may be done again, and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities to justify the most iniquitous opinions, and the judges never fail of directing them accordingly.
 * Part IV, Ch. 5

On Poetry: Poetry, a Rhapsody (1733)

 * As learned commentators view In Homer more than Homer knew.

 * So geographers, in Afric maps, With savage pictures fill their gaps, And o'er unhabitable downs Place elephants for want of towns.

 * Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.

 * Hobbes clearly proves that every creature Lives in a state of war by nature.

 * So, naturalists observe, a flea Hath smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller still to bit 'em; And so proceed ad infinitum. Thus every poet, in his kind, Is bit by him that comes behind.

Polite Conversation (1738)

 * A penny for your thoughts.
 * Introduction.

Dialogue 1

 * Do you think I was born in a wood to be afraid of an owl?

 * The sight of you is good for sore eyes.

 * 'Tis as cheap sitting as standing.

 * I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world.

 * I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.

 * She's no chicken; she's on the wrong side of thirty, if she be a day.

 * She looks as if butter wou'dn't melt in her mouth.

 * If it had been a bear it would have bit you.

 * She wears her clothes, as if they were thrown on her with a pitchfork.

 * Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.

 * I mean you lie—under a mistake.

 * Lord M. What religion is he of? Lord Sp. Why, he is an Anythingarian.

Dialogue 2

 * He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.

 * That's as well said, as if I had said it myself.

 * You must take the will for the deed.

 * Fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.

 * She has more goodness in her little finger, than he has in his whole body.

 * Lord, I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing!

 * They say a carpenter's known by his chips.

 * The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.

 * I'll give you leave to call me anything, if you don't call me "spade".

 * May you live all the days of your life.

 * I have fed like a farmer: I shall grow as fat as a porpoise.

 * 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 water.

 * I know Sir John will go, though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs.

 * I thought you and he were hand-in-glove.

 * Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.
 * Earlier proverb, quoted in James Howell's English Proverbs (1659)
 * Better belly burst than good drink lost.

Dialogue 3

 * 'T is happy for him that his father was before him.

 * There is none so blind as they that won't see.

 * She watches him as a cat would watch a mouse.

 * She pays him in his own coin.

 * There was all the world and his wife.

 * Sharp's the word with her.

 * There's two words to that bargain.

Epitaph (1740)
IONATHAN SWIFT S.T.D. Hujus Ecclesiæ Cathedralis Decani, Ubi sæva Indignatio Ulterius Cor lacerare nequit, Abi Viator Et imitare, si poteris, Strenuum pro virili Libertatis Vindicatorem.'' of Jonathan Swift, Doctor of Sacred Theology, Dean of this Cathedral Church, where fierce Indignation can no longer injure the Heart. Go forth, Voyager, and copy, if you can, this vigorous (to the best of his ability) Champion of Liberty. Savage indignation there Cannot lacerate his Breast. Imitate him if you dare, World-Besotted Traveler; he Served human liberty.
 * ''Hic depositum est Corpus
 * Here is laid the Body
 * Latin epitaph for himself (1740)
 * Variant translations:
 * Swift has sailed into his rest;
 * W. B. Yeats, in The Winding Stair (1933)
 * Here is laid the body of Jonathan Swift, Doctor of Divinity, Dean of this Cathedral Church, where savage indignation can no longer tear his heart. Go, traveller, and imitate if you can one who strove with all his might to champion liberty.
 * As translated in John Mullan's review of Jonathan Swift by Victoria Glendinning, in London Review of Books, Vol. 20 No. 21 (29 October 1998)

Disputed

 * You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come; Knock as you please, there's nobody at home.
 * On a Dull Writer, reported in John Hawkesworth, The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin (1754), p. 265. Alternately attributed to Alexander Pope by Bartlett's Quotations, 10th Edition (1919). Compare: "His wit invites you by his looks to come, But when you knock, it never is at home", William Cowper, Conversation, line 303

 * I know nothing of music; I would not give a farthing for all the music in the universe.
 *  Observations on Lord Orrery's Remarks on Life of Swift, Delany, (1754), p. 192.

 * It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
 * Attributed to Swift in many places. According to the Oxford Treasury of Sayings and Quotations (Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 270), this quotation is "not traced in Swift's works", and is thus "probably apocryphal". It is possibly a paraphrase of a sentence in Swift's Letter to a young clergyman (see above): "Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired".
 * The earliest print cite to anything resembling this was found by Quote Investigator in a 1786 essay by U.S. Congressman Fisher Ames: "I have heard it remarked, that men are not to be reasoned out of an opinion that they have not reasoned themselves into."

Misattributed

 * There is, indeed, no wild beast more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate.
 * Christian Nestell Bovee, in Intuitions and Summaries of Thought (1862), Volume I, p. 124

 * As love without esteem is volatile and capricious; esteem without love is languid and cold.
 * John Hawkesworth, The Adventurer, No. 36 (10 March, 1753)

 * A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.
 * Alexander Pope, Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727), Published in Swift's Miscellanies (1727)

Quotes about Swift

 *  Gulliver's Travels is to early modern philosophy what Aristophanes’ The Clouds was to early ancient philosophy. … Swift objects to Enlightenment because it encourages a hypertrophic development of mathematics, physics and astronomy, thus returning to the pre-Socratic philosophy that Aristophanes had criticized for being unselfconscious or unable to understand man. But, unlike pre-Socratic philosophy, which had no interest in politics at all, this science wished to rule and could rule. The new science had indeed generated sufficient power to rule, but in order to do so had had to lose the human perspective. In other words, Swift denied that modern science had actually established a human or political science. All to the contrary, it had destroyed it.
 * Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (1988), pp. 293-295

 * I re-read Jonathan Swift's A Tale of the Tub twice a year, but that's to punish myself. It is, I think, the most powerful, nonfictive prose in the English language, but it's a kind of vehement satire upon visionary projectors as it were, like myself, and so I figure it is a good tonic and corrective for me.
 * Harold Bloom, interview with BookBrowse

 * [M]y eye fell upon a little book, in a bookseller's window, on the outside of which was written: " A TALE OF A TUB; PRICE 3d." The title was so odd, that my curiosity was excited. I had the 3d. but, then, I could have no supper. In I went, and got the little book, which I was so impatient to read, that I got over into a field, at the upper corner of Kew gardens, where there stood, a hay-stack. On the shady side of this, I sat down to read. The book was so different from any thing that I had ever read before: it was something so new to my mind, that, though I could not at all understand some of it, it delighted me beyond description; and it produced what I have always considered a sort of birth of intellect.
 * William Cobbett, 'To The Reformers' (5 February 1820), Cobbett's Weekly Political Register, Vol. 86, No. 12 (8 June 1820), in Cobbett's Political Register. Volume XXXVI (1820), column 877

 * Swift has a higher reputation than he deserves. His excellence is strong sense; for his humour, though very well, is not remarkably good. I doubt whether The Tale of a Tub be his; for he never owned it, and it is much above his worldly manner.
 * Samuel Johnson, in James Boswell, Life of Johnson (1791)

 * The rogue never hazards a figure.
 * Samuel Johnson, as quoted by Joseph Warton in The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq., Vol. 9 (London: 1797), footnote on p. 84

 * Swift’s claim to his rest from ‘savage indignation’ was also, characteristically, a literary allusion. In his First Satire, Juvenal splenetically explains why he finds himself writing satire at all. He stands in the streets of Rome, he says, and watches the monsters of vice that pass by. His gorge rises and he just has to write about it: ‘si natura negat, facit indignatio versum.’ ‘Though nature forbids, indignation makes the verse.’ Satire is forced into being by the pressure of the times. The satirist’s anger – for which, in later ages, Juvenal became a representative – makes silence impossible. It is strange to find ‘sæva indignatio’ on Swift’s memorial tablet, a tablet that notably does not contain any mention of the usual Christian consolations – any hope of salvation or another life beyond this one. It is strange because Swift had distanced the satirical writings from his own feelings: they were written in the voices of personae whose attitudes and beliefs had been chosen precisely because they were not, apparently, his own, and published anonymously or pseudonymously. Gulliver is the most famous, but there are many others: sometimes evidently foolish, sometimes worryingly lucid; self-righteous or ‘humble’; piously outraged or alarmingly dispassionate. None of them speaks for Swift. Readers have often imagined the author’s fury or disgust or horror, but without actually hearing his voice. And yet, at the end, he seemed to declare that the satire came from his own wounded heart.
 * John Mullan, commenting upon Swift's epitaph, in Plenty of Penny Pinching, his review of Jonathan Swift by Victoria Glendinning, in London Review of Books, Vol. 20 No. 21 (29 October 1998)

 * If I had to make a list of six books which were to be preserved when all others were destroyed, I would certainly put Gulliver's Travels among them.
 * George Orwell, in "Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels" (1946)

 * Giant and great as this Dean is, I say we should hoot him. Some of this audience mayn't have read the last part of Gulliver, and to such I would recall the advice of the venerable Mr. Punch to persons about to marry, and say, 'Don't'. When Gulliver first lands among the Yahoos, the naked howling wretches clamber up trees and assault him, and he describes himself as 'almost stifled with the filth which fell about him.' The reader of the fourth part of Gulliver's Travels is like the hero himself in this instance. It is Yahoo language: a monster gibbering shrieks, and gnashing imprecations against mankind — tearing down all shreds of modesty, past all sense of manliness and shame; filthy in word, filthy in thought, furious, raging, obscene.
 * William Makepeace Thackeray, The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century (1853)

 * As fierce a beak and talon as ever struck — as strong a wing as ever beat, belong to Swift. [...] One can gaze, and not without awe and pity, at the lonely eagle chained behind the bars [...] An immense genius: an awful downfall and ruin. So great a man he seems to me, that thinking of him is like thinking of an empire falling.
 * William Makepeace Thackeray, The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century (1853)

 * Swift was a good writer, but had a bad heart. Even to the last he was devoured by ambition, which he pretended to despise. Would you believe that, after finding his opposition to the ministry fruitless, and, what galled him still more, contemned, he summoned up resolution to wait on Sir Robert Walpole? Sir Robert, seeing Swift look pale and ill, inquired the state of his health, with his usual old English good humour and urbanity. They were standing by a window that looked into the court-yard, where was an ancient ivy dropping towards the ground. "Sir," said Swift, with an emphatic look, "I am like that ivy; I want support." Sir Robert answered, "Why then, doctor, did you attach yourself to a falling wall?" Swift took the hint, made his bow, and retired.
 * Horace Walpole, Walpoliana (1825), p. 150

Of parts and fame uncommon; Used both to pray, and to profane, To serve both God and Mammon … This Place he got by wit and rhyme, And many ways most odd; And might a Bishop be in time, Did he believe in God … Look down, St Patrick, look, we pray On thine own Church and Steeple; Convert thy Dean on this great Day, Or else, God help the People. Quoted in Sybil le Brocquy, ‘’Cadenus’’, 1962, p.33
 * Today this Temple gets a Dean,
 * attributed to John Smedley [Bishop of Clogher]; verses nailed to door of St. Patrick’s Cathedral on the installation of Swift in 1713.

title: Jonathan Swift