The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.

Meaning of the quote

The quote means that using the right words in the right way is what makes writing or speaking have a good style. Good style isn't just about using fancy words, but about choosing the best words to express your ideas clearly and effectively.

About Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satirist, author, and Anglican cleric who became the Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. He is best known for works like ‘A Tale of a Tub’, ‘Gulliver’s Travels’, and ‘A Modest Proposal’, which showcased his masterful use of Horatian and Juvenalian satire.

More about the author

More quotes from Jonathan Swift

I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

The latter part of a wise person’s life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

May you live all the days of your life.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

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

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Books, the children of the brain.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying… that he is wiser today than yesterday.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

He was a bold man that first eat an oyster.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

The want of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Observation is an old man’s memory.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Where there are large powers with little ambition… nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers because, whoever shares his thoughts with the public will convince them as he himself appears convinced.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together; Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention, by false speaking, to deceive and injure your neighbour.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Every dog must have his day.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

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

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Don’t set your wit against a child.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667-1745)