Jonathan Swift słynne cytaty
„Najlepszymi lekarzami na świecie są: doktor dieta, doktor spokój i doktor dobry humor.”
The best doctors in the world are: Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman. (ang.)
Źródło: Leksykon złotych myśli, wyboru dokonał Krzysztof Nowak, Warszawa 1998.
„Prawo jest jak pajęczyna, w której małe muchy grzęzną, a osy i trzmiele przez nią przelatują.”
Laws are cobwebs which may catch small flies but let wasps and hornets break through (ang.)
Źródło: w 1707
„Słonia przeważnie rysuje się mniejszego, niż jest w rzeczywistości, a pchłę większą.”
Źródło: Leksykon złotych myśli, wyboru dokonał K. Nowak, Warszawa 1998.
Jonathan Swift cytaty
„Każdy pragnie żyć długo, ale nikt nie chciałby starości.”
Źródło: Zostawić ślad na ziemi, red. Małgorzata Halicka, Jerzy Halicki, Wydawn. Uniwersytetu w Białymstoku, 2006, s. 137.
The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes. (ang.)
Jonathan Swift: Cytaty po angielsku
Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift (1731), l. 459
Kontekst: 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.”
The Battle of the Books, preface (1704)
“As boys do sparrows, with flinging salt upon their tails.”
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.”
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)
Kontekst: 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)
Kontekst: 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)
Kontekst: 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)
Kontekst: 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.”
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)
Źródło: Abolishing Christianity and Other Essays
“Books, the children of the brain.”
Sect. 1
A Tale of a Tub (1704)
Źródło: 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.”
Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)
Wariant: All would live long, but none would be old.
Źródło: 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)
Kontekst: 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.
Voyage to Brobdingnag, Ch. 6
Źródło: 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
Wariant: 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.
