| John Bartlett (1820–1905). Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. 1919. |
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| Page 291 |
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| | | 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] |
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