Literary Birthday – 30 November – Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift was born on 30 November 1667 and died on 19 October 1745.

Jonathan Swift Quotes

1. Books, the children of the brain.
2. Just get the right syllable in the proper place.
3. Whatever the poets pretend, it is plain they give immortality to none but themselves; it is Homer and Virgil we reverence and admire, not Achilles and Aeneas.
4. Men are contented to be laughed at for their wit, but not for their folly.
5. Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.
6. There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
7. The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.
8. May you live every day of your life.
9. ‘That was excellently observed,’ say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.
10. Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.

Jonathan Swift is known as one of the finest Anglo-Irish satirists. He wrote essays, poetry, pamphlets, and a novel. The fatherless Irish author and clergyman grew up under the care of his uncle. He received a bachelor’s degree from Trinity College, and became dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. Most of his writings were published under pseudonyms. He is best known for his dystopian and utopian book Gulliver’s Travels, which was published in 1726, and mocks English customs and the politics of the day. He also wrote A Tale of a Tub and ‘A Modest Proposal‘.

Source for Image: Charles Jervas, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jonathan_Swift_by_Charles_Jervas_detail.jpg

by Amanda Patterson
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