177 quotes
And, God knows, I thought my Money was as safe as my Maidenhead.
The Humble Petition of Frances Harris (1700)
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…
'Tis happy for him that his father was born before him.
Faith, that's as well said as if I had said it myself.
Seamen have a custom, when they meet a whale, to fling him out an empty tub by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the ship.
A Tale of a Tub (1704)
Under an oak, in stormy weather,
I joined this rogue and whore together;
And none but he who rules the thunder
Can put this rogue and whore asunder.
I'm up and down and round about,
Yet all the world can't find me out;
Though hundreds have employed their leisure,
They never yet could find my measure.
On a Circle. Reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers.
Gulliver's Travels (1726)
Will she pass in a crowd? Will she make a figure in a country church?
ALL Rivers go to the Sea, but none return from it.
A Tritical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind (1707)
See how she rears her head,
And rolls about her dreadful eyes,
To drive all virtue out, or look it dead!
'Twas sure this basilisk sent Temple thence ...
Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect: like a man, who hath thought of a good repartee when the discourse is changed, or the company parted; or like a physician, who hath found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.
Complaint is the largest tribute heaven receives, and the sincerest part of our devotion.
Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711)
Where Young must torture his invention
To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
On Poetry: Poetry, a Rhapsody (1733)
Then gave him some familiar Thumps,
A College Joke to cure the Dumps.
Cassinus and Peter: A Tragical Elegy (1734)
In all distresses of our friends
We first consult our private ends.
The Bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711)
To all my foes, dear Fortune, send
Thy gifts, but never to my friend:
I tamely can endure the first,
But this with envy makes me burst.
Verses on the Death of Doctor Swift (1731)
Then, rising with Aurora's light,
The Muse invoked, sit down to write;
Blot out, correct, insert, refine,
Enlarge, diminish, interline.
"That was excellently observed," say I when I read a passage in another where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, then I pronounce him to be mistaken.