A Tale of a Tub Quotes

“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 half under ground, it shall pass however for wondrous deep, upon no wiser a reason than because it is wondrous dark.”
― Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub

“Whatever reader desires to have a thorough comprehension of an author's thoughts cannot take a better method than by putting himself into the circumstances and postures of life that the author was in upon every important passage as it flowed from his pen; for this will introduce a parity and strict correspondence of ideas between the reader and the author. Now, to assist the diligent reader in so delicate an affair, as far as brevity will permit, I have recollected that the shrewdest pieces of this treatise were conceived in bed in a garret; at other times (for a reason best known to myself) I thought fit to sharpen my invention with hunger; and in general, the whole work was begun, continued, and ended under a long course of physic and great want of money.”
― Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub

“For to enter the palace of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms, therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back-door.”
― Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub

“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 of wit or sublime.”
― Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub

“Books, like men their authors, have no more than one way of coming into the world, but there are ten thousand to go out of it, and return no more.”
― Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub

“Readers may be divided into three classes - the superficial, the ignorant, and the learned, and I have with much felicity fitted my pen to the genius and advantage of each.”
― Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub

“When a man’s fancy gets astride on his reason, when imagination is at cuffs with the senses, and common understanding as well as common sense, is kicked out of doors; the first proselyte he makes is himself.”
― Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub

“for as health is but one thing, and has been always the same, whereas diseases are by thousands, besides new and daily additions, so all the virtues that have been ever in mankind are to be counted upon a few fingers, but his follies and vices are innumerable, and time adds hourly to the heap. ”
― Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub

“For what man in the natural state or course of thinking did ever conceive it in his power to reduce the notions of all mankind exactly to the same length, and breadth, and height of his own? Yet this is the first humble and civil design of all innovators in the empire of reason.”
― Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub

“Books, like men their authors, have no more than one way of coming into the world, but there are ten thousand to go out of it and return no more.”
― Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub

“panegyrical”
― Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub

“But as human happiness is of a very short duration, so in those days were human fashions upon which it entirely depends.”
― Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub

“La sabiduría es como una gallina, cuyo cacareo debemos saber valorar y considerar, pues es acompañado por un huevo.”
― Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub

“La sabiduría es como una gallina, que debemos sabe, cuyo cacareo debemos saber valorar y considerar, pues es acompañado por un huevo”
― Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub