Gulliver Quotes

• The tiny Lilliputians surmise that Gulliver's watch may be his god, because it is that which, he admits, he seldom does anything without consulting.

  Jonathan Swift

  Doe, Watches, May

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• And he gave it for his opinion, "that 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.

  Jonathan Swift

  Country, Agriculture, Race

  Gulliver's Travels "A Voyage to Brobdingnag" ch. 7 (1726)

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• I cannot but conclude that 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.

  Jonathan Swift

  Race, Earth, Littles

  Gulliver's Travels "A Voyage to Brobdingnag" ch. 6 (1726)

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• When the Lilliputians first saw Gulliver's watch, that "wonderful kind of engine...a globe, half silver and half of some transparent metal," they identified it immediately as the god he worshiped. After all, "he seldom did anything without consulting it: he called it his oracle, and said it pointed out the time for every action in his life." To Jonathan Swift in 1726 that was worth a bit of satire. Modernity was under way. We're all Gullivers now. Or are we Yahoos?

  James Gleick

  Firsts, Watches, Oracles

  James Gleick (2000). “Faster: The Acceleration of Just about Everything”, Vintage

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

  Jonathan Swift

  Sarcastic, Sarcasm, Glasses

  'The Battle of the Books' (1704) preface

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• Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.

  Jonathan Swift

  Pride, Poor Nations, Proud

  Jonathan Swift (1826). “Gulliver's Travels”

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• 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.

  Jonathan Swift

  Summer, War, Science

  Gulliver's Travels "A Voyage to Laputa, etc." ch. 5 (1726)

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• Be willing to be a child and be the Lilliputian in the world of Gulliver.

  Mary Karr

  Children, Writing, Yankee Stadium

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• Why are we never quite at ease in the presence of a schoolmaster? Because we are conscious that he is not quite at his ease in ours. He is awkward, and out of place in the society of his equals. He comes like Gulliver from among his little people, and he cannot fit the stature of his understanding to yours.

  Charles Lamb

  Education, Teacher, Teaching

  Charles Lamb, Mary Lamb (2017). “Delphi Complete Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Illustrated)”, p.763, Delphi Classics

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• Most great writers suffer and have no idea how good they are. Most bad writers are very confident. Be willing to be a child and be the Lilliputian in the world of Gulliver, the bat girl in Yankee Stadium. That’s a more fruitful way to be.

  Mary Karr

  Girl, Children, Yankee Stadium

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• Books have their destinies like men. And their fates, as made by generations of readers, are very different from the destinies foreseen for them by their authors. Gulliver's Travels, with a minimum of expurgation, has become a children's book; a new illustrated edition is produced every Christmas. That's what comes of saying profound things about humanity in terms of a fairy story.

  Aldous Huxley

  Children, Book, Fate

  Aldous Huxley (1932). “Rotunda: a selection from the works of Aldous Huxley”

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• America's strength has made it a sort of Gulliver in world affairs: By wiggling its toes it can, often inadvertently, break the arm of a Lilliputian.

  Mohsin Hamid

  America, World, Arms

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• I am Plato's Republic. Mr. Simmons is Marcus. I want you to meet Jonathan Swift, the author of that evil political book, Gulliver's Travels! And this other fellow is Charles Darwin, and-this one is Schopenhauer, and this one is Einstein, and this one here at my elbow is Mr. Albert Schweitzer, a very kind philosopher indeed. Here we all are, Montag. Aristophanes and Mahatma Gandhi and Gautama Buddha and Confucius and Thomas Love Peacock and Thomas Jefferson and Mr. Lincoln, if you please. We are also Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

  Ray Bradbury

  Plato, Book, Evil

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• There's a whole slew of wonderful speculation of flying in a fanciful way. Gulliver is one of the central examples; Swift has the hum of Arabian Nights in his ear with Gulliver's Travels. The difference is in scale - Gulliver as a kind of Sinbad kind of figure, the way he is picked up and carried. Just to finish up with Scheherazade, I do think that The Arabian Nights could be considered as a great book on women's position in the world.

  Marina Warner

  Book, Night, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

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• The trombones crunched redgold under my bed, and behind my gulliver the trumpets three-wise silverflamed, and there by the door the timps rolling through my guts and out again crunched like candy thunder. Oh, it was wonder of wonders. And then, a bird of like rarest spun heavenmetal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now, came the violin solo above all the other strings, and those strings were like a cage of silk around my bed. Then flute and oboe bored, like worms of like platinum, into the thick thick toffee gold and silver. I was in such bliss, my brothers.

  Anthony Burgess

  Wise, Brother, Wine

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• Then, brothers, it came. Oh, bliss, bliss and heaven. I lay all nagoy to the ceiling, my gulliver on my rookers on the pillow, glazzies closed, rot open in bliss, slooshying the sluice of lovely sounds. Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh.

  Anthony Burgess

  Brother, Heaven, Lovely

  Anthony Burgess (2012). “A Clockwork Orange (Restored Text)”, p.38, W. W. Norton & Company

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• If the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my Travels.

  Jonathan Swift

  Science, World, Dozen

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• when ... I've thought of madness, it seems most easily explained to me as poetry in action. A life of symbol rather than reality. On paper one can understand Gulliver, or Kafka, or Dante. But let a man go about behaving as if he were a giant or a midget, or caught in a cosmic plot directed at himself, or in heaven or hell, and we feel horror - we want to disavow him to proclaim him as far removed as possible from ourselves.

  Helen Eustis

  Reality, Men, Heaven

  Helen Eustis (2015). “The Horizontal Man: A Library of America eBook Classic”, p.245, Library of America

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• [Gulliver was soon being read] "from the cabinet council to the nursery".

  John Gay

  Nurse, Cabinets, Council

  "The 100 best novels, No 3 - Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726)" by Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. October 6, 2013.

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• If I had to make a list of six books which were to be preserved when all others were destroyed, I would certainly put Gulliver's Travels among them.

  George Orwell

  Book, Lists, Six

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.311, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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