Clergy

"O my America! my new-found land."

"Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright."

"The Sestos and Abydos of her breasts Not of two lovers, but two loves the nests."

"Who ever loves, if he do not propose The right true end of love, he's one that goes To sea for nothing but to make him sick."

"The heavens rejoice in motion, why should I Abjure my so much loved variety."

"No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace, As I have seen in one autumnal face."

"She, and comparisons are odious."

"Nature's lay idiot, I taught thee to love."

"Though Truth and Falsehood be Near twins, yet Truth a little elder is."

"Go and catch a falling star, Get with child a mandrake root, Tell me where all past years are, Or who cleft the Devil's foot, Teach me to hear mermaids singing, Or to keep off envy's stinging, And find What wind Serves to advance an honest mind."

"On a huge hill, Cragged and steep, Truth stands, and hee that will Reach her, about must, and about must goe; And what the hills suddenness resists, winne so; Yet strive so, that before age, deaths twilight, Thy Soule rest, for none can worke in that night."

"Send home my long strayed eyes to me, Which (Oh) too long have dwelt on thee."

"Let us love nobly, and live, and add again Years and years unto years, till we attain To write threescore: this is the second of our reign."

"All Kings, and all their favorites, All glory of honors, beauties, wits The sun itself, which makes times, as they pass, Is elder by a year, now, than it was When thou and I first one another saw: All other things, to their destruction draw, Only our love hath no decay; This, no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday, Running, it never runs from us away, But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day."

"'Tis true, 'tis day; what though it be? O wilt thou therefore rise from me? Why should we rise, because 'tis light? Did we lie down, because 'twas night? Love which in spite of darkness brought us hither Should in despite of light keep us together."

"Twice and thrice had I loved thee, Before I knew thy face or name."

"Oh do not die, for I shall hate All women so, when thou art gone."

"When I died last, and dear, I die As often as from thee I go."

"But think that we Are but turned aside to sleep."

"Yesternight the sun went hence, And yet is here today."

"Sweetest love, I do not go, For weariness of thee, Nor in hope the world can show A fitter love for me; But since that I Must die at last, 'tis best, To use my self in jest Thus by feigned deaths to die."

"Who are a little wise, the best fools be."

"I am two fools, I know, For loving, and for saying so In whining poetry."

"As well a well-wrought urn becomes The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs."

"The Phoenix riddle hath more wit By us, we two being one, are it. So to one neutral thing both sexes fit, We die and rise the same, and prove Mysterious by this love."

"For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love."

"She is all states, and all princes, I, Nothing else is."

"Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time."

"Busy old fool, unruly Sun, Why dost thou thus, Through windows, and through curtains call on us? Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?"

"And dare love that, and say so too, And forget the He and She."

"But he who loveliness within Hath found, all outward loathes, For he who color loves, and skin, Loves but their oldest clothes."

"I have done one braver thing Than all the Worthies did; And yet a braver thence doth spring, Which is to keep that hid."

"And swear No where Lives a woman true and fair. If thou find'st one, let me know, Such a pilgrimage were sweet; Yet do not, I would not go, Though at next door we might meet, Though she were true, when you met her, And last, till you write your letter, Yet she Will be False, ere I come, to two, or three."

"The rogue never hazards a figure."

"Today this Temple gets a Dean,"

"Swift was a good writer, but had a bad heart. Even to the last he was devoured by ambition, which he pretended to despise. Would you believe that, after finding his opposition to the ministry fruitless, and, what galled him still more, contemned, he summoned up resolution to wait on Sir Robert Walpole? Sir Robert, seeing Swift look pale and ill, inquired the state of his health, with his usual old English good humour and urbanity. They were standing by a window that looked into the court-yard, where was an ancient ivy dropping towards the ground. "Sir," said Swift, with an emphatic look, "I am like that ivy; I want support." Sir Robert answered, "Why then, doctor, did you attach yourself to a falling wall?" Swift took the hint, made his bow, and retired."

"As fierce a beak and talon as ever struck — as strong a wing as ever beat, belong to Swift. [...] One can gaze, and not without awe and pity, at the lonely eagle chained behind the bars [...] An immense genius: an awful downfall and ruin. So great a man he seems to me, that thinking of him is like thinking of an empire falling."

"Giant and great as this Dean is, I say we should hoot him. Some of this audience mayn't have read the last part of Gulliver, and to such I would recall the advice of the venerable Mr. Punch to persons about to marry, and say, 'Don't'. When Gulliver first lands among the Yahoos, the naked howling wretches clamber up trees and assault him, and he describes himself as 'almost stifled with the filth which fell about him.' The reader of the fourth part of Gulliver's Travels is like the hero himself in this instance. It is Yahoo language: a monster gibbering shrieks, and gnashing imprecations against mankind — tearing down all shreds of modesty, past all sense of manliness and shame; filthy in word, filthy in thought, furious, raging, obscene."

"If I had to make a list of six books which were to be preserved when all others were destroyed, I would certainly put Gulliver's Travels among them."

"Swift’s claim to his rest from ‘savage indignation’ was also, characteristically, a literary allusion. In his First Satire, Juvenal splenetically explains why he finds himself writing satire at all. He stands in the streets of Rome, he says, and watches the monsters of vice that pass by. His gorge rises and he just has to write about it: ‘si natura negat, facit indignatio versum.’ ‘Though nature forbids, indignation makes the verse.’ Satire is forced into being by the pressure of the times. The satirist’s anger – for which, in later ages, Juvenal became a representative – makes silence impossible. It is strange to find ‘sæva indignatio’ on Swift’s memorial tablet, a tablet that notably does not contain any mention of the usual Christian consolations – any hope of salvation or another life beyond this one. It is strange because Swift had distanced the satirical writings from his own feelings: they were written in the voices of personae whose attitudes and beliefs had been chosen precisely because they were not, apparently, his own, and published anonymously or pseudonymously. Gulliver is the most famous, but there are many others: sometimes evidently foolish, sometimes worryingly lucid; self-righteous or ‘humble’; piously outraged or alarmingly dispassionate. None of them speaks for Swift. Readers have often imagined the author’s fury or disgust or horror, but without actually hearing his voice. And yet, at the end, he seemed to declare that the satire came from his own wounded heart."

"Swift has a higher reputation than he deserves. His excellence is strong sense; for his humour, though very well, is not remarkably good. I doubt whether The Tale of a Tub be his; for he never owned it, and it is much above his worldly manner."

"[M]y eye fell upon a little book, in a bookseller's window, on the outside of which was written: "A TALE OF A TUB; PRICE 3d." The title was so odd, that my curiosity was excited. I had the 3d. but, then, I could have no supper. In I went, and got the little book, which I was so impatient to read, that I got over into a field, at the upper corner of Kew gardens, where there stood, a hay-stack. On the shady side of this, I sat down to read. The book was so different from any thing that I had ever read before: it was something so new to my mind, that, though I could not at all understand some of it, it delighted me beyond description; and it produced what I have always considered a sort of birth of intellect."

"I re-read Jonathan Swift's A Tale of the Tub twice a year, but that's to punish myself. It is, I think, the most powerful, nonfictive prose in the English language, but it's a kind of vehement satire upon visionary projectors as it were, like myself, and so I figure it is a good tonic and corrective for me."

"Gulliver's Travels is to early modern philosophy what Aristophanes’ The Clouds was to early ancient philosophy. … Swift objects to Enlightenment because it encourages a hypertrophic development of mathematics, physics and astronomy, thus returning to the pre-Socratic philosophy that Aristophanes had criticized for being unselfconscious or unable to understand man. But, unlike pre-Socratic philosophy, which had no interest in politics at all, this science wished to rule and could rule. The new science had indeed generated sufficient power to rule, but in order to do so had had to lose the human perspective. In other words, Swift denied that modern science had actually established a human or political science. All to the contrary, it had destroyed it."

"A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday."

"As love without esteem is volatile and capricious; esteem without love is languid and cold."

"There is, indeed, no wild beast more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate."

"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."

"I know nothing of music; I would not give a farthing for all the music in the universe."

"You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come; Knock as you please, there's nobody at home."