Satirist Quotes

“She 's no chicken; she 's on the wrong side of thirty, if she be a day.”

“Wisdom is a fox who, after long hunting, will at last cost you the pains to dig out; it is a cheese, which, by how much the richer, has the thicker, the homlier, and the coarser coat; and whereof to a judicious palate, the maggots are best. It is a sack posset, wherein the deeper you go, you'll find it the sweeter. Wisdom is a hen, whose cackling we must value and consider, because it is attended with an egg. But lastly, it is a nut, which, unless you choose with judgment, may cost you a tooth, and pay you with nothing but a worm.”

“Brutes find out where their talents lie; A bear will not attempt to fly, A foundered horse will oft debate Before he tries a five barred gate. A dog by instinct turns aside Who sees the ditch too deep and wide, But man we find the only creature Who, led by folly, combats nature; Who, when she loudly cries-Forbear! With obstinacy fixes there; And where the genius least inclines, Absurdly bends his whole designs.”

“There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them.”

“Two women seldom grow intimate but at the expense of a third person.”

“If they would, for Example, praise the Beauty of a Woman, or any other Animal, they describe it by Rhombs, Circles, Parallelograms, Ellipses, and other geometrical terms.”

“Men of wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.”

“Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.”

“It is not so much the being exempt from faults as the having overcome them that is an advantage to us; it being with the follies of the mind as with weeds of a field, which if destroyed and consumed upon the place where they grow, enrich and improve it more than if none had ever sprung there.”

“I hope you will be ready to own publicly, whenever you shall be called to it, that by your great and frequent urgency you prevailed on me to publish a very loose and uncorrect account of my travels, with directions to hire some young gentleman of either university to put them in order, and correct the style, as my cousin Dampier did, by my advice, in his book called "A Voyage round the world."”

“A carpenter is known by his chips.”

“A fig for your bill of fare; show me your bill of company.”

“For, if we take an examination of what is generally understood by happiness, as it has respect either to the understanding or the senses, we shall find all its properties and adjuncts will herd under this short definition: that it is a perpetual possession of being well deceived.”

“Careful observers may foretell the hour(By sure prognostics) when to dread a show'r.While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'erHer frolics, and pursues her tail no more.”

“I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.”

“Nothing more unqualified the man to act with prudence than a misfortune that is attended with shame and guilt.”

“Observation is an old man's memory.”

“She has more goodness in her little finger than he has in his whole body.”

“When I am in danger of bursting, I will go and whisper among the reeds.”

“Men who possess all the advantages of life are in a state where there are many accidents to disorder and discompose, but few to please them.”

“I will venture to affirm, that the three seasons wherein our corn has miscarried did no more contribute to our present misery, than one spoonful of water thrown upon a rat already drowned would contribute to his death; and that the present plentiful harvest, although it should be followed by a dozen ensuing, would no more restore us, than it would the rat aforesaid to put him near the fire, which might indeed warm his fur-coat, but never bring him back to life.”

“Arbitrary power is but the first natural step from anarchy, or the savage life.”

“Let a man be ne'er so wise, he may be caught with sober lies.”

“The various opinions of philosophers have scattered through the world as many plagues of the mind as Pandora's box did those of the body; only with this difference, that they have not left hope at the bottom.”

“He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.”