Jonathan Swift Quotes About Wit

Quotes about: Wit

• 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.

  Jonathan Swift

  Reading, Thinking, Criticism

  Jonathan Swift (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Jonathan Swift (Illustrated)”, p.72, Delphi Classics

• 'T is 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.

  Jonathan Swift

  School, Men, Cooking

  Jonathan Swift, Thomas Sheridan, John Nichols (1801). “The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, D.D., Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin”, p.121

• Don't set your wit against a child.

  Jonathan Swift

  Education, Teacher, Children

  Jonathan Swift (1803). “The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, D.D. ... : with Notes, Historical and Critical”, p.279

• All human race would be wits. And millions miss, for one that hits.

  Jonathan Swift

  Race, Missing, Would Be

  Jonathan Swift (1860). “The Works of Jonathan Swift ...: With Copious Notes and Additions, and a Memoir of the Author”, p.347

• For poetry, he's past his prime,
  He takes an hour to find a rhyme;
  His fire is out, his wit decayed,
  His fancy sunk, his muse a jade.
  I'd have him throw away his pen,
  But there's no talking to some men.

  Jonathan Swift

  Past, Men, Fire

  Matthew Prior, Jonathan Swift (1853). “Select poems of Prior and Swift [ed. by C. Bathurst].”, p.155

• Religion supposed Heaven and Hell, the word of God, and sacraments, and twenty other circumstances which, taken seriously, are a wonderful check to wit and humour.

  Jonathan Swift

  Taken, Heaven, Atheism

  Jonathan Swift, Sir Walter Scott (1814). “The Works of Jonathan Swift: Miscellaneous essays”, p.392

• Abstracts, abridgments, summaries, etc., have the same use with burning-glasses,--to collect the diffused light rays of wit and learning in authors, and make them point with warmth and quickness upon the reader's imagination.

  Jonathan Swift

  Glasses, Light, Imagination

• Men of wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.

  Jonathan Swift

  Drama, Men, Play

• 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.

  Jonathan Swift

  Character, Profound, Sublime

  Jonathan Swift (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Jonathan Swift (Illustrated)”, p.26, Delphi Classics

• I cannot imagine why we should be at the expense to furnish wit for succeeding ages, when the former have made no sort of provision for ours.

  Jonathan Swift

  Age, Succeed, Imagine

  Jonathan Swift, Thomas Roscoe (1859). “The works of Jonathan Swift, D.D.: with copious notes and additions and a memoir of the author”, p.273

• Perpetual aiming at wit is a very bad part of conversation. It is done to support a character: it generally fails; it is a sort of insult on the company, and a restraint upon the speaker.

  Jonathan Swift

  Character, Support, Done

• If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.

  Jonathan Swift

  Men, Criticism, Age

  Jonathan Swift (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Jonathan Swift (Illustrated)”, p.899, Delphi Classics

• When you set about your composing, it may be necessary for your ease, and better distillation of wit, to put on your worst clothes, and the worse the better; for an author, like a limbeck, will yield the better for having a rag about him: besides that, I have observed a gardener cut the outward rind of a tree (which is the surtout of it) to make it bear well; and this is a natural account of the usual poverty of poets, and is an argument why wits, of all men living, ought to be ill clad.

  Jonathan Swift

  Cutting, Men, Clothes

  Jonathan Swift (1812). “The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, D.D. ...: With Notes, Historical and Critical”, p.73

• A jargon form'd from the lost language, wit, Confounded in that Babel of the pit; Form'd by diseased conceptions, weak and wild, Sick lust of souls, and an abortive child; Born between whores and fops, by lewd compacts, Before the play, or else between the acts; Nor wonder, if from such polluted minds Should spring such short and transitory kinds.

  Jonathan Swift

  Children, Spring, Play

  Jonathan Swift (1801). “The Works of of the Rev. Jonathan Swift”, p.411

• It is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they are employed on as when they have lost their edge.

  Jonathan Swift

  Cutting, Razors, Lost

  Jonathan Swift (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Jonathan Swift (Illustrated)”, p.27, Delphi Classics

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