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Jonathan Swift citations
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Jonathan Swift, né le 30 novembre 1667 à Dublin, en Irlande, et mort le 19 octobre 1745 dans la même ville est un écrivain, satiriste, essayiste, pamphlétaire politique anglo-irlandais. Il est aussi poète et clerc et à ce titre il a été doyen de la Cathédrale Saint-Patrick de Dublin.

Il est célèbre pour avoir écrit Les Voyages de Gulliver. Swift est probablement le plus grand satiriste en prose de la langue anglaise. Il publie ses œuvres en usant de pseudonymes comme Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff et M.B. Drapier, ou même anonymement. Il est connu enfin pour deux styles de satire, la satire horacienne et la satire juvénalienne. Il fut membre du Scriblerus Club.

✵ 30. novembre 1667 – 19. octobre 1745
Jonathan Swift photo
Jonathan Swift: 147 citations0 J'aime

Jonathan Swift citations célèbres

“Quand un vrai génie apparaît en ce monde, on peut le reconnaître à ce signe, que les imbéciles sont tous ligués contre lui.”

Jonathan Swift

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.

“La vision est l'art de voir les choses invisibles.”

Jonathan Swift

en
Pensées

“Je ne puis tirer qu'une conclusion : c'est que les gens de votre race forment, dans leur ensemble, la plus odieuse petite vermine à qui la Nature ait jamais permis de ramper à la surface de la terre.”

Jonathan Swift livre Les Voyages de Gulliver

Les Voyages de Gulliver, 1726

“Cette méthode stoïque de subvenir à nos besoins en supprimant nos désirs, équivaut à se couper les pieds pour n’avoir plus besoin de chaussure.”

Jonathan Swift

en
Pensées

“Les caprices de l'espèce femelle ne sont pas limités à une seule partie du monde ni à un seul climat, [ils] sont bien plus généraux qu'on ne pourrait l'imaginer.”

Jonathan Swift livre Les Voyages de Gulliver

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

“Vous avez fort bien prouvé que l'ignorance, la paresse et le vice peuvent être quelquefois les seules qualités d'un homme d'État; que les lois sont expliquées, interprétées et appliquées le mieux possible par des gens que l'intérêt et la rapacité portent à les dénaturer, à les embrouiller et à les éluder.”

Jonathan Swift livre Les Voyages de Gulliver

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

“There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake, though all the World sees them to be in downright nonsense.”

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Jonathan Swift

The Tatler No. 63 (September 1709)

“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.”

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Jonathan Swift The Battle of the Books and Other Short Pieces

Source: The Battle of the Books and Other Short Pieces

“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.”

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Jonathan Swift

“We of this age have discovered a shorter, and more prudent method to become scholars and wits, without the fatigue of reading or of thinking.”

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Jonathan Swift

“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.”

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Jonathan Swift

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

“Ever eating, never cloying,
All-devouring, all-destroying
Never finding full repast,
Till I eat the world at last.”

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Jonathan Swift

“Difference in opinions has cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine.”

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Jonathan Swift livre Les Voyages de Gulliver

Source: Gulliver's Travels

“A soldier is a "Yahoo" hired to kill in cold blood as many of his own Species, who have never offended him, as possibly he can.”

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Jonathan Swift

“This made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavor to do himself honor among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him.”

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Jonathan Swift livre Les Voyages de Gulliver

Source: Gulliver's Travels

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

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Jonathan Swift

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 2

“I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.”

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Jonathan Swift

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 1

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

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Jonathan Swift

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

“Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.”

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Jonathan Swift

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 1

“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.”

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Jonathan Swift

Thoughts on Religion (1765), published posthumously

“I mean you lie—under a mistake.”

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Jonathan Swift

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 1

“There is, indeed, no wild beast more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate.”

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Jonathan Swift

Christian Nestell Bovee, in Intuitions and Summaries of Thought (1862), Volume I, p. 124
Misattributed

“Bread is the staff of life.”

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Jonathan Swift livre A Tale of a Tub

Preface
A Tale of a Tub (1704)

“Tis very warm weather when one's in bed.”

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Jonathan Swift

Journal to Stella (November 8, 1710)

“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.”

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Jonathan Swift

Essay on the Fates of Clergymen (1728)

“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.”

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Jonathan Swift livre Les Voyages de Gulliver

On the Emperor of Lilliput, in Voyage to Lilliput, Ch. 2
Gulliver's Travels (1726)

“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.”

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Jonathan Swift

The Furniture of a Woman's Mind (1727)

“I love good creditable acquaintance; I love to be the worst of the company.”

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Jonathan Swift

Journal to Stella (May 17, 1711)

“Poor Nations are hungry, and rich Nations are proud, and Pride and Hunger will ever be at Variance.”

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Jonathan Swift livre Les Voyages de Gulliver

Voyage to Houyhnhnms, Ch. 5
Gulliver's Travels (1726)

“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.”

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Jonathan Swift

On Dreams (1727)

“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.”

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Jonathan Swift livre Les Voyages de Gulliver

Voyage to Brobdingnag, Ch. 7 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Gulliver%27s_Travels/Part_II/Chapter_VII <br class="br">Gulliver&#x27;s Travels (1726)

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