Jonathan Swift — "One of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the …"
One of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish had been left unsaid.
Get This Quote & Author's Image Illustrated On:
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
Kitchen
Apparel
Other
More from Jonathan Swift
"I have been for some years past, working upon a great work, which I intend to publish, and it is a complete refutation of all that hath ever been written upon the subject of government."
"It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors, crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed b…"
"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."
"For what the world calls virtue, is but a compound of vices."
"A physician is an unfortunate gentleman who is every day required to perform a miracle; namely, to reconcile health with intemperance."
About Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Anglo-Irish satirist and Dean of Dublin's St Patrick's Cathedral whose Gulliver's Travels (1726) and A Modest Proposal (1729) are the canonical English-language satires. Closely associated with Alexander Pope (Scriblerus Club poet and collaborator) and John Gay (Beggar's Opera author and satirical contemporary). For an intellectual contrast, see Daniel Defoe, English Whig journalist and Robinson Crusoe author (1660-1731) — Defoe's Crusoe (1719) celebrates Enlightenment self-reliance and the colonial-mercantile project; Swift's Gulliver (1726) systematically dismantles every form of human pretension Defoe celebrated. The cleanest Augustan Whig-vs-Tory literary pairing — optimistic-empirical vs misanthropic-satirical.