Quote #5

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

More from Jonathan Swift

  1. Books, the children of the brain.
  2. Instead of dirt and poison we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax; thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of thin…
  3. 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 …
  4. Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
  5. There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof, I hope, there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I …
  6. There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.
  7. When I behold this I sighed, and said within myself, 'Surely mortal man is a broomstick!' Nature sent him into the world strong and lusty, …
  8. There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake, though all the World sees them to be in downright nonsense.

All Jonathan Swift quotes