When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
en
Pensées
Variante: Quand un vrai génie apparaît en ce bas monde, on peut le reconnaitre à ce signe que les imbéciles sont tous ligués contre lui.
Source: Litt. cancres.
Source: Litt. conspiration.
Œuvres
Les Voyages de Gulliver
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift:
147
citations
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J'aime
Jonathan Swift citations célèbres
But he may please to consider, that the caprices of womankind are not limited to any climate or nation, and that they are much more uniform than can be easily imagined.
en
Les Voyages de Gulliver, 1726
You have clearly proved, that ignorance, idleness, and vice, are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator; that laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied, by those whose interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them.
en
Les Voyages de Gulliver, 1726
Jonathan Swift: Citations en anglais
Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift (1731), l. 459
Contexte: 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.
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.”
Jonathan Swift
livre
The Battle of the Books
The Battle of the Books, preface (1704)
“As boys do sparrows, with flinging salt upon their tails.”
Jonathan Swift
livre
A Tale of a Tub
Sect. 7
A Tale of a Tub (1704)
“She wears her clothes, as if they were thrown on her with a pitchfork.”
Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 1
“Pedantry is properly the over-rating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to.”
Jonathan Swift
livre
A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding
A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding
“Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible.”
Thoughts on various subjects (Further thoughts on various subjects) (1745)
“Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it”
The Examiner No. XIV (Thursday, November 9th, 1710)
Contexte: 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.
“There is nothing in this World constant but Inconstancy”
A Tritical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind (1707)
Contexte: 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.
“Men nowadays Worship the Rising Sun, and not the Setting.”
A Tritical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind (1707)
Contexte: 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.
“ALL Rivers go to the Sea, but none return from it.”
A Tritical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind (1707)
Contexte: 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.
“I said the thing which was not.”
Jonathan Swift
livre
Les Voyages de Gulliver
For they have no word in their language to express lying or falsehood.
Voyage to Houyhnhnms, Ch. 3
Gulliver's Travels (1726)
Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)
Source: Abolishing Christianity and Other Essays
“Books, the children of the brain.”
Jonathan Swift
livre
A Tale of a Tub
Sect. 1
A Tale of a Tub (1704)
Source: A Tale Of A Tub And Other Writings
“We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”
Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)
“Every man desires to live long, but no man would be old.”
Jonathan Swift
livre
Les Voyages de Gulliver
Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)
Variante: All would live long, but none would be old.
Source: Gulliver's Travels
“Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired…”
Letter to a Young Clergyman (January 9, 1720), on proving Christianity to unbelievers
“I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.”
Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)
“Laws are like Cobwebs which may catch small Flies, but let Wasps and Hornets break through.”
A Tritical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind (1707)
Contexte: 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.
Jonathan Swift
livre
Les Voyages de Gulliver
Voyage to Brobdingnag, Ch. 6
Source: Gulliver's Travels (1726)
“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
“Proper words in proper places, make the true definition of a style.”
Letter to a Young Clergyman http://www.online-literature.com/swift/religion-church-vol-one/7/ (January 9, 1720)
Alexander Pope, Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727), Published in Swift's Miscellanies (1727)
Misattributed
Variante: 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.
