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Prose

Notes It contains the quotation “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this
sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.” which is the source for the title of A
Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.
Other typical quotes include:
• “The latter part of a wise man’s life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false
opinions he had contracted in the former.”
• “Whatever the poets pretend, it is plain they give immortality to none but themselves; it is
Homer and Virgil we reverence and admire, not Achilles or Aeneas. With historians it is
quite the contrary; our thoughts are taken up with the actions, persons, and events we read,
and we little regard the authors.”
• “When a man is made a spiritual peer he loses his surname; when a temporal, his Christian
name.”
• “If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning, etc., beginning
from his youth and so go on to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions
would appear at last!”
• “What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not we are told expressly: that
they neither marry, nor are given in marriage.”
Jonathan Swift wrote “Thoughts on Various Subject, Moral and Diverting” in this work was the
profound epigraph: “When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign,
that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.” Ostensibly, John Kennedy Toole derived the
title of his book, A Confederacy of Dunces, from Swift’s quotation. Furthermore, the major purpose
of the book is to further this philosophical musing of Swift’s mind. However, A Confederacy of
Dunces is a fictional book; therefore, to accomplish his purpose Toole realized that he must utilize
his astute sense of use of rhetorical elements. Consequently, A Confederacy of Dunces is saturated
with the six elements of rhetoric: persona, appeal to the audience, proper treatment and recognition
of subject matter, context, intention, and genre. The prolific and powerful rhetorical elements
utilized by John Kennedy Toole in A Confederacy of Dunces prodigiously contribute to the impact
of the novel; the rhetorical elements execute Toole’s purpose.
Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

• We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
• Every man desires to live long, but no man would be old.
• A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.
• Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.
• What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not we are told expressly: that they
neither marry, nor are given in marriage.
• The Stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our
feet when we want shoes.
• The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable; for the happy impute all their
success to prudence or merit.
• The latter part of a wise man’s life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false
opinions he had contracted in the former.
• Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and orators, because he that would obtrude his
thoughts and reasons upon a multitude, will convince others the more, as he appears convinced
himself. Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions, and
consequently of no use to a good king or a good ministry; for which reason Courts are so
overrun with politics.

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