Quote #6

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 things, which are sweetness and light.

More from Jonathan Swift

  1. Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.
  2. Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
  3. Books, the children of the brain.
  4. There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.
  5. 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 …
  6. There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake, though all the World sees them to be in downright nonsense.
  7. There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof, I hope, there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I …
  8. And surely 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:

All Jonathan Swift quotes