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JSJonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift

Life dates: 1667 AD — 1745 AD

Swift’s imaginary voyages test claims to knowledge and authority. The selected scenes contrast useful work with elaborate schemes; attend to Gulliver and his hosts before reading their remarks as direct advice.

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Life and writing

The catalogue identifies Jonathan Swift and gives his lifetime as 1667–1745. The linked work presents itself through travel papers attributed to Lemuel Gulliver, including a publisher’s address and a letter from the captain. That fictional framing matters: the speaking traveller is not simply Swift delivering personal instructions. The electronic text credits David Price, but the checked record does not establish its underlying printed edition. Its release and update dates belong to the digital publication, not to the selected sentences or Swift’s lifetime.

In Part II, Chapter VII, Gulliver reports the king of Brobdingnag’s preference for useful agricultural improvement over political intrigue. The judgement comes from the king within Gulliver’s account. In Part III, Chapter V, the visitor describes a projector at the academy of Lagado who hopes to obtain sunshine from cucumbers and asks for money to continue. The two intact extracts match the linked English text under punctuation, case and spacing comparison. Read their contrasts as scenes of satire, not as agronomic evidence or a blanket rejection of inquiry.

Reading this voice

Read Part II, Chapter VII beside Part III, Chapter V. Ask who speaks, what Gulliver finds admirable, and how each scene treats useful knowledge. The complete selected English extracts match the checked transcription under limited normalization. Their narrative setting qualifies detached advice; the connection does not verify every Swift-labelled record or establish the original printed edition behind this digital text.

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Quotations and sayings

08c. 1706 AD
I have observed a gardener cut the outward rind of a tree (which is the surtout of it), to make it bear well: and this is a natural account of the usual poverty of poets, and is an argument why wits, of all men living, ought to be ill clad. I have always a sacred veneration for any one I observe to be a little out of repair in his person, as supposing him either a poet or a philosopher; because the richest minerals are ever found under the most ragged and withered surfaces of the earth.
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14c. 1706 AD
He asked me, "what were the usual causes or motives that made one country go to war with another?" I answered "they were innumerable; but I should only mention a few of the chief. Sometimes the ambition of princes, who never think they have land or people enough to govern; sometimes the corruption of ministers, who engage their master in a war, in order to stifle or divert the clamour of the subjects against their evil administration. Difference in opinions has cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine; whether whistling be a vice or a virtue; whether it be better to kiss a post, or throw it into the fire: what is the best colour for a coat, whether black, white, red, or gray: and whether it should be long or short, narrow or wide, dirty or clean; with many more. Neither are any wars so furious and bloody, or of so long a continuance, especially if it be in things indifferent.
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19c. 1706 AD
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 is resolved to list me in that number. I conceive therefore, as to the business of being profound, that it is with writers as with wells; a person with good eyes may see to the bottom of the deepest, provided any water be there; and often, when there is nothing in the world at the bottom, besides dryness and dirt, though it be but a yard and half under ground, it shall pass however for wondrous deep, upon no wiser a reason than because it is wondrous dark.
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22c. 1706 AD
They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man's goods from thieves, but honesty has no defence against superior cunning; and, since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and connived at, or has no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage.
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