Jonathan Swift Quotes About Talent

Quotes about: Talent

• 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.

  Jonathan Swift

  Dog, Horse, Lying

• Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.

  Jonathan Swift

  Judging, Age, Literature

• Punning is a talent which no man affects to despise but he that is without it.

  Jonathan Swift

  Men, Talent, Despise

• Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.

  Jonathan Swift

  Birthday, People, Soul

• There is no talent so useful toward rising in the world, or which puts men more out of the reach of fortune, than that quality generally possessed by the dullest sort of men, and in common speech called discretion; a species of lower prudence, by the assistance of which, people of the meanest intellectuals, without any other qualification, pass through the world in great tranquillity, and with universal good treatment, neither giving nor taking offence.

  Jonathan Swift

  Men, People, Giving

  Jonathan Swift (1856). “The Works of Jonathan Swift ...: Containing Interesting and Valuable Papers, Not Hitherto Published ... With Memoir of the Author”, p.206

• Have you not observed that there is a lower kind of discretion and regularity, which seldom fails of raising men to the highest station in the court, the church, and the law?

  Jonathan Swift

  Men, Law, Church

  Jonathan Swift, Sir Walter Scott (1824). “Epistolary correspondence. Letters from August 1714, to September 1724”, p.332

• Desponding Phyllis was endu'd
  With ev'ry Talent of a Prude,
  She trembled when a Man drew near;
  Salute her, and she turn'd her Ear:
  If o'er against her you were plac'd
  She durst not look above your Waist

  Jonathan Swift

  Men, Prudes, Looks

  Jonathan Swift, John Arbuthnot, Alexander Pope, John Gay (1742). “Miscellanies. In Four Volumes”, p.183

• Brutes find out where their talents lie; a bear will not attempt to fly.

  Jonathan Swift

  Lying, Bears, Talent

  Jonathan Swift, Thomas Sheridan, John Nichols (1801). “Poems, Polite convesation, etc”, p.166

• It is an uncontrolled truth, that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them.

  Jonathan Swift

  Men, Talent, Figures

  Jonathan Swift, Sir Walter Scott (1824). “Epistolary correspondence. Letters from September 1725 to May 1732”, p.373

• It is the talent of human nature to run from one extreme to another.

  Jonathan Swift

  Running, Talent, Human Nature

  Jonathan Swift, John Hawkesworth (1755). “The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D. Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin: Accurately Revised in Six Volumes, Adorned with Copper-plates : with Some Account of the Author's Life and Notes Historical and Explanatory”, p.46

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