Jonathan Swift idézet

oldal 3

„A felfedezés abból áll, hogy látjuk azt, amit mindenki látott, és azt gondoljuk, amit senki más nem gondolt.”

„A képzelet annál élénkebb, minél gyengébb az okoskodás.”

„… a női nem különleges szeszélyeit egyáltalán nem korlátozza éghajlat, sem országhatár; a női kedélyvilág sokkal inkább uniformis jellegű, mint ahogy kezdetben gondolták.”

„…az az ember, aki két búzakalászt vagy akár csak két szál füvet is tud növeszteni ott, ahol eddig csak egy nőtt ki a földből: nagyobb dicséretet érdemel az emberiségtől, és mérhetetlenül értékesebb szolgálatot tett a hazának, mint a politikusok minden fajzata együttvéve.”

„… bárkinek jogában áll ugyan mérgeket tárolni rejtett szekrénykéiben - de főbenjáró bűn volna fioláit likőrcímkékkel ellátva forgalomba hozni.”

„Minden igazhitű a megfelelő végén törje fel az ő tojásait. Hogy mármost melyik a „megfelelő” vége a tojásnak, ez szerény véleményem szerint egyéni lelkiismeret kérdése, illetőleg a legfelsőbb hatóságok döntésétől függ.”

„… a nagy darab emberek álltak mindig a legrosszabbul értelem dolgában.”

„Csődörben erő a legfőbb érték, kancában a csinosság…”

„… a föld királyai főleg saját országuk jogszokásaitól vannak általában elragadtatva.”

„A szatíra olyan tükör, amelyben a szemlélők általában mindenkinek az arcát felfedezik, kivéve a saját magukét.”

„A szellem tudás nélkül… olyan tejszín, amely egyetlen éjszaka összegyűlik a felszínen, s amelyből az ügyes kéz hamarosan habot ver.”

„… azokat, akiknek véleménye ellentétben van a többségével, miért kell arra kényszeríteni, hogy ezt megváltoztassák?”

„A harag és a düh erőt ad ugyan a testnek, de elernyeszti a szellem izmait, s az elmének minden próbálkozását legyengíti és hatástalanná teszi.”

„Feljegyezték, hogy tizenegyezer ember szenvedett inkább kinhalált, semhogy a hagyományok ellenére a vékonyabb felén törje fel a tojást.”

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

“You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come;
Knock as you please, there's nobody at home.”

“She pays him in his own coin.”

“As love without esteem is volatile and capricious; esteem without love is languid and cold.”

“…one enemy can do more hurt, than ten friends can do good.”

“Sharp's the word with her.”

“Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age…”

“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.”

“I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world.”

“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.”

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

“And surely one of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish had been left unsaid…”

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

“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 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”

“Fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.”

“T is happy for him that his father was before him.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“He made it a part of his religion never to say grace to his meat.”