Quotes · Skopia

20 quotes

SortEditorial Year Length

Person·Jonathan Swift✕clear

Satire · Travel writing

Men are never so serious, thoughtful, and intent as when they are at stool.

Gulliver's Travels · 1726

★ 5.5

Essay · Satire

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.

Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting · 1745

★ 5.5

Satire · Travel writing

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

Gulliver's Travels · 1726

★ 5.4

Satire · Travel writing

I said there was a society of men among us bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose that white is black and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are slaves.

Gulliver's Travels · 1726

★ 4.5

Proper words in proper places, make the true definition of a style.

1720

★ 3.8

Essay · Satire

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

1727

★ 3.8

There’s none so blind as they that won’t see.

1738

★ 3.8

Essay · Satire

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

1711

★ 3.7

Essay · Satire

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

1711

★ 3.7

Satire · Travel writing

They will never allow that a child is under any obligation to his father for begetting him, or his mother for bringing him into the world - which, considering the miseries of human life, was neither a benefit in itself nor intended so by his parents, whose thoughts in their love encounters were otherwise employed.

Gulliver's Travels · 1726

★ 3.7

Satire · Travel writing

Whoever 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.

Gulliver's Travels · 1726

★ 3.7

I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and all my love is towards individuals...I hate and detest that animal called man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.

1725

★ 2.8

He was a bold Man that first eat an oyster.

1738

★ 2.2

Essay · Philosophical literature

There is nothing in this World constant, but Inconstancy.

1711

★ 2.1

Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.

1704

★ 2.0

Essay · Philosophical literature

Laws are like Cobwebs, which may catch small Flies, but let Wasps and Hornets break through.

1711

★ 2.0

Travel writing · Satire

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.

Gulliver's Travels · 1726

★ 2.0

It is the Folly of too many, to mistake the Eccho of a London Coffee-house for the Voice of the Kingdom.

1711

★ 1.2

Essay · Satire

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

1711

★ 1.2

Essay · Satire

Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.

1727

★ 1.2