Irish satirist. cleric, political pamphleteer.
He is best known for Gulliver's Travels, an account of Lemuel Gulliver's fanciful voyages. Jonathan Swift also published
numerous political pamphlets. The most sensational of these short works, "A Modest Proposal," is generally considered to be
the most famous satirical essay in the English language.
He became a staunch supporter of the Protestant Church and worked hard to publicise the plight of his fellow Irishmen, who
were being treated despicably by the English at the time.
Swift did not believe much in the new theoretical science and rational philosophy. He did not think that it would contribute
to the moral improvement of people. On the contrary, he saw it as a very dangerous display of pride and confidence in the powers of human reasoning.
This undermined what he believed was the most important point of traditional Christian faith, the belief that human beings
are fundamentally flawed creatures.
(1667-1745)
The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.
~ Jonathan Swift
Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
~ Jonathan Swift
Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
~ Jonathan Swift
We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
~ Jonathan Swift
Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
~ Jonathan Swift
Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
~ Jonathan Swift
Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.
~ Jonathan Swift
Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.
~ Jonathan Swift
What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.
~ Jonathan Swift
A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.
~ Jonathan Swift
A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention, by false speaking, to deceive and injure your neighbour.
~ Jonathan Swift
The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.
~ Jonathan Swift
There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
~ Jonathan Swift
Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps
few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.
~ Jonathan Swift
The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
~ Jonathan Swift
I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any
nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.
~ Jonathan Swift
I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
~ Jonathan Swift
Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.
~ Jonathan Swift
Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together; Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.
~ Jonathan Swift
As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.
~ Jonathan Swift
Principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.
~ Jonathan Swift
A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
~ Jonathan Swift
Books, the children of the brain.
~ Jonathan Swift
May you live every day of your life.
~ Jonathan Swift
No wise man ever wished to be younger.
~ Jonathan Swift
Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.
~ Jonathan Swift
Herbert George Wells, the English author began his career as a novelist with a popular sequence of science fiction that
remains the most familiar part of his work. He later wrote realistic novels and novels of ideas. He achieved fame with scientific
fantasies such as The Time Machine (1895) and War of the Worlds (1898), and wrote a range of comic social novels which proved highly popular.
H.G. Wells was a very brave man. He was profoundly disturbed by the rising of the Nazi Germany and fascism in Italy. His critical
writings on the aggressive Imperial Germany coupled with his violent attacks on Adolf Hitler and his collaborators. His "anti-German"
books were burned by Goebbels during the infamous book bonfires at German universities.
The name "H.G. Wells" appeared very near the top of a list compiled by the SS/SD command staff of those intellectuals and politicians
slated for immediate liquidation upon the invasion of Britain by the Nazis.
(1866 - 1946)
Do not wait; the time will never be "just right." Start
where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.
~ George Herbert
Of all the animals, man is the only one that lies.
~ Mark Twain
History would be an excellent thing, if only it were true.
~ Leo Tolstoy
