Jonathan Swift
Irish satirist, poet, and clergyman
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
But what I have most at Heart is, that some Method should be thought on for ascertaining and fixing our Language for ever, after such Alterations are made in it as shall be thought requisite. For I am of Opinion, that it is better a Language should not be wholly perfect, that it should be perpetually changing.
—Jonathan Swift, Irish satirist, poet, and clergyman, A Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue, 1712
Posted on March 25, 2004 at 12:56 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
We next went to the school of languages, where three professors sat in consultation upon improving that of their own country.
The first project was to shorten discourse by cutting polysyllables into one, and leaving out verbs and participles, because in reality all things imaginable are but nouns.
The other project was a scheme for entirely abolishing all words whatsoever; and this was urged as a great advantage in point of health as well as brevity. For it is plain that every word we speak is in some degree a diminution of our lungs by corrosion, and consequently contributes to the shortening of our lives. An expedient was therefore offered, that since words are only names for things, it would be more convenient for all men to carry about them such things as were necessary to express the particular business they are to discourse on. And this invention would certainly have taken place, to the great ease as well as health of the subject, if the women, in conjunction with the vulgar and illiterate, had not threatened to raise a rebellion, unless they might be allowed the liberty to speak with their tongues after the manner of their forefathers; such constant irreconcilable enemies to science are the common people.
—Jonathan Swift, Irish satirist, poet, and clergyman, Gulliver's Travels, 1726
Posted on September 25, 1999 at 6:37 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
In dagger-contests, and the artillery of words,
(For swords are madmen's tongues, and tongues are madmen's swords.)
—Jonathan Swift, Irish satirist, poet, and clergyman, Ode to Dr. William Sancroft, 1692
Posted on August 10, 1999 at 9:42 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.
—Jonathan Swift, Irish satirist, poet, and clergyman
Posted on December 12, 2002 at 10:37 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
I said there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are as slaves.
—Jonathan Swift, Irish satirist, poet, and clergyman, Gulliver's Travels, 1726
Posted on May 16, 2002 at 8:02 PM
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