Geburtstag: 30. November 1667
Todesdatum: 19. Oktober 1745
Jonathan Swift war ein irischer Schriftsteller und Satiriker der frühen Aufklärung. Er hat auch unter folgenden Pseudonymen geschrieben: Isaac Bickerstaff, A Dissenter, A Person of Quality, A Person of Honour, M.B. Drapier, T.R.D.J.S.D.O.P.I.I. .
— Jonathan Swift
Gedanken über verschiedene Gegenstände / Thoughts on Various Subjects
Original engl.: "Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time."
— Jonathan Swift
Gedanken über verschiedene Gegenstände / Thoughts on Various Subjects
Original engl.: "We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another."
— Jonathan Swift
Polite Conversation
Original engl.: "The best doctors in the world are Dr. Diet, Dr. Quiet and Dr. Merryman."
— Jonathan Swift
Gedanken über verschiedene Gegenstände / Thoughts on Various Subjects
Original engl.: "[…] the self-love of some men inclines them to please others, and the self-love of others is wholly employed in pleasing themselves. This makes the great distinction between virtue and vice."
— Jonathan Swift
Gedanken über verschiedene Gegenstände / Thoughts on Various Subjects
Original engl.: "The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes."
— Jonathan Swift
Gedanken über verschiedene Gegenstände / Thoughts on Various Subjects
Original engl.: "Every man desires to live long; but no man would be old." - p. 188 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3AThe_Battle_of_the_Books%2C_and_Other_Short_Pieces.djvu/193
— Jonathan Swift
A Critical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind (1707)
Original engl.: "Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through."
— Jonathan Swift
Tagebuch für Stella
(Original englisch: "I love good creditable acquaintance: I love to be the worst of the company: [I am not of those that say, 'For want of company, welcome trumpery]." - The Journal to Stella. Letters 23. Chelsea, May 12, 1711. No. 17 p. 119
— Jonathan Swift
Ein Tonnenmärchen, Dritte Abteilung. Eine Abschweifung, hinsichtlich der Kritiker
Original engl.: "Lastly, a true critic in the perusal of a book is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones." - A Tale of a Tub. 10th edition London 1751. Sec. III: A Disgession concerning Critics. p. 63 books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=q1FOAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA63
— Jonathan Swift, buch Gullivers Reisen
Gullivers Reisen. Teil 2: Reise nach Brobdingnag, Kapitel 7, gutenberg.spiegel.de http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/gullivers-reisen-7565/17
And he gave it for his opinion, "that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together." - Gulliver's Travels. Part II: Voyage to Brobdingnag. Chapter VII en.wikisource https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Gulliver%27s_Travels/Part_II/Chapter_VII
— Jonathan Swift
Context: Yet malice never was his aim;
He lashed the vice but spared the name.
No individual could resent,
Where thousands equally were meant.
His satire points at no defect
But what all mortals may correct;
For he abhorred that senseless tribe
Who call it humor when they gibe.
Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift (1731), l. 459
— Jonathan Swift
Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 2
— Jonathan Swift
Thoughts on various subjects (Further thoughts on various subjects) (1745)
— Jonathan Swift
A Tritical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind (1707), Context: ALL Rivers go to the Sea, but none return from it. Xerxes wept when he beheld his Army, to consider that in less than a Hundred Years they would be all Dead. Anacreon was' Choakt with a Grape-stone, and violent Joy Kills as well as violent Grief. There is nothing in this World constant but Inconstancy; yet Plato thought that if Virtue would appear to the World in her own native Dress, all Men would be Enamoured with her. But now since Interest governs the World, and Men neglect the Golden Mean, Jupiter himself, if he came on the Earth would be Despised, unless it were as he did to Danae in a Golden Shower. For Men nowadays Worship the Rising Sun, and not the Setting.
— Jonathan Swift
Context: 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.
The Examiner No. XIV (Thursday, November 9th, 1710)
