John Bartlett (1820–1905). Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. 1919.
Page 291
| Jonathan Swift. (1667–1745) (continued) |
| 3135 |
| He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. |
| Gulliver’s Travels. Part iii. Chap. v. Voyage to Laputa. |
| 3136 |
| It is a maxim, that those to whom everybody allows the second place have an undoubted title to the first. |
| Tale of a Tub. Dedication. |
| 3137 |
| Seamen have a custom, when they meet a whale, to fling him out an empty tub by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the ship. 1 |
| Tale of a Tub. Preface. |
| 3138 |
| Bread is the staff of life. 2 |
| Tale of a Tub. Preface. |
| 3139 |
| Books, the children of the brain. |
| Tale of a Tub. Sect. i. |
| 3140 |
| As boys do sparrows, with flinging salt upon their tails. 3 |
| Tale of a Tub. Sect. vii. |
| 3141 |
| He made it a part of his religion never to say grace to his meat. |
| Tale of a Tub. Sect. xi. |
| 3142 |
| How we apples swim! 4 |
| Brother Protestants. |
| 3143 |
| The two noblest things, which are sweetness and light. |
| Battle of the Books. |
| 3144 |
| The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages. |
| Thoughts on Various Subjects. |
| 3145 |
| Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent. |
| Thoughts on Various Subjects. |
| 3146 |
| A nice man is a man of nasty ideas. |
| Thoughts on Various Subjects. |
| Note 1. In Sebastian Munster’s “Cosmography” there is a cut of a ship to which a whale was coming too close for her safety, and of the sailors throwing a tub to the whale, evidently to play with. This practice is also mentioned in an old prose translation of the “Ship of Fools.”—Sir James Mackintosh: Appendix to the Life of Sir Thomas More. [back] |
| Note 2. See Mathew Henry, Quotation 10. [back] |
| Note 3. Till they be bobbed on the tails after the manner of sparrows.—Francis Rabelais: book ii. chap. xiv. [back] |
| Note 4. Ray: Proverbs. Mallet: Tyburn. [back] |