For the qualities of sheer wit and humor, Swift had no superior, ancient or modern.
Those who have lost an infant are never, in a way, without an infant.
A dog can have a friend; he has affections and character, he can enjoy equally the field and the fireside; he dreams, he caresses, he propitiates; he offends, and is pardoned; he stands by you in adversity; he is a good fellow.
Green little vaulter, in the sunny grass, Catching your heart up at the feel of June, Sole noise that’s heard amidst the lazy noon, When ev’n the bees lag at the summoning brass.
An exquisite invention this, Worthy of Love’s most honeyed kiss, – This art of writing billet-doux – In buds, and odors, and bright hues! In saying all one feels and thinks In clever daffodils and pinks; In puns of tulips; and in phrases, Charming for their truth, of daisies.
We must regard all matter as an intrusted secret which we believe the person concerned would wish to be considered as such. Nay, further still, we must consider all circumstances as secrets intrusted which would bring scandal upon another if told.
We are violets blue, For our sweetness found Careless in the mossy shades, Looking on the ground. Love’s dropp’d eyelids and a kiss, – Such our breath and blueness is.
Wit is the clash and reconcilement of incongruities; the meeting of extremes round a corner.
Colors are the smiles of Nature. When they are extremely smiling, and break forth into other beauty besides, they are her laughs.
It is a delicious moment, certainly, that of being well nestled in bed, and feeling that you shall drop gently to sleep. The good is to come, not past; the limbs have just been tired enough to render the remaining in one posture delightful; the labour of the day is gone.
Beauty too often sacrifices to fashion. The spirit of fashion is not the beautiful, but the wilful; not the graceful, but the fantastic; not the superior in the abstract, but the superior in the worst of all concretes,-the vulgar.
The only place a new hat can be carried into with safety is a church, for there is plenty of room there.
There is no greater mistake in the world than the looking upon every sort of nonsense as want of sense.
A friend of ours, who is an admirer of Isaac Walton, was struck, just as we were, with the likeness of the old angler’s face to a fish.
We really cannot see what equanimity there is in jerking a lacerated carp out of the water by the jaws, merely because it has no the power of making a noise; for we presume that the most philosophic of anglers would hardly delight in catching a shrieking fish.
The same people who can deny others everything are famous for refusing themselves nothing.
Oh for a seat in some poetic nook, Just hid with trees and sparkling with a brook!
Beauty too often sacrifices to fashion.
If you are melancholy for the first time, you will find, upon a little inquiry, that others have been melancholy many times, and yet are cheerful now.
Tears hinder sorrow from becoming despair.
O scaly, slippery, wet, swift, staring wights, What is ’t ye do? what life lead? eh, dull goggles? How do ye vary your vile days and nights? How pass your Sundays? Are ye still but joggles In ceaseless wash? Still nought but gapes and bites, And drinks, and stares, diversified with boggles.