A Quote by Jonathan Swift

Every age might perhaps produce one or two geniuses, if they were not sunk under the censure and obloquy of plodding, servile, imitating pedants.

Jonathan Swift

Quote Topics

Age Censure Every Geniuses Imitating Might One Or Two Pedants Perhaps Plodding Produce Sunk Two Were

Quote Author

Jonathan Swift
Irish - Writer
November 30, 1667 - October 19, 1745

Enough if every age produce two or three critics of this esoteric class, with here and there a reader to understand them.

Thomas de Quincey

In truth, I am nothing but a plodding mediocrity — please observe, a plodding mediocrity — for a mere mediocrity does not go very far, but a plodding one gets quite a distance. There is joy in that success, and a distinction can come from courage, fidelity and industry.

Benjamin Cardozo

It is harder to avoid censure than to gain applause; for this may be done by one great or wise action in an age. But to escape censure a man must pass his whole life without saying or doing one ill or foolish thing

David Hume

Every Age has its own peculiar faith. Any attempt to translate into facts the mission of one Age with the machinery of another, can only end in an indefinite series of abortive efforts. Defeated by the utter want of proportion between the means and the end, such attempts might produce martyrs, but never lead to victory.

Giuseppe Mazzini

Produce, produce! Were it but the pitifulest, infinitesimal fraction of a product, produce it in God's name. 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee? Out with it then! Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might.

Thomas Carlyle

There are only one or two geniuses every century.

Raoul Peck

We're in a golden age for television. TV 25 years ago was slow, plodding , boring. The production values were not great. Today it's so much better. People get really invested it.

Adrian Dunbar

However dangerous might be the shock of a comet, it might be so slight, that it would only do damage at the part of the Earth where it actually struck; perhaps even we might cry quits if while one kingdom were devastated, the rest of the Earth were to enjoy the rarities which a body which came from so far might bring it. Perhaps we should be very surprised to find that the debris of these masses that we despised were formed of gold and diamonds; but who would be the most astonished, we, or the comet-dwellers, who would be cast on our Earth? What strange being each would find the other!

Pierre Louis Maupertuis

I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.

Samuel Johnson

It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution.

Joseph Addison

I guess historically, drag queens were imitating movie stars and luminaries. It's kind of nice to have a movie star imitating a drag queen.

John Cameron Mitchell

Perhaps what's needed now is a bolder form of censure after all, because the Internet is not a universal human right. If people cannot be trusted to treat one another with respect, dignity and consideration, perhaps they deserve to have their online freedoms curtailed.

Milo Yiannopoulos

Now, we're just imitating and imitating and imitating what we've done before. The real revolution on how we make clothes and how we wear clothes is about to come. I don't know if we should be afraid or not. That's when we're going to see a Steve Jobs in the industry.

Norma Kamali

All of the little entries in 'The Cows' were written in an irregular way. There might be one or two done one day, and then two weeks might go by or four weeks, and then they were put in an order or sequence.

Lydia Davis

In every age 'the good old days' were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them.