Gulliver's Travels

Gulliver's Travels

by

Jonathan Swift

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The Houyhnhnms Character Analysis

Rational, peaceful, generous, and civilized horses, the Houyhnhnms are ideal beings (at least from Gulliver’s perspective). They are so honest and virtuous that they don’t even have words for things like “evil” and “falsehood.” They live content in their egalitarian and placid society troubled only by the question of how to constrain the Yahoos that live among them.

The Houyhnhnms Quotes in Gulliver's Travels

The Gulliver's Travels quotes below are all either spoken by The Houyhnhnms or refer to The Houyhnhnms. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Perspective Theme Icon
).
Book 4, Chapter 4 Quotes

Power, government, war, law, punishment, and a thousand other things, had no terms wherein that language could express them…

Related Characters: Lemuel Gulliver (speaker), The Houyhnhnms
Page Number: 225
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 4, Chapter 12 Quotes

I here take a final leave of all my courteous readers…to apply those excellent lessons of virtue which I learned among the Houyhnhmns; to instruct the Yahoos of my own family, is far as I shall find them docible animals; to behold my figure often in a glass, and thus, if possible, habituate myself by time to tolerate the sight of a human creatures…

Related Characters: Lemuel Gulliver (speaker), The Houyhnhnms, The Yahoos
Page Number: 270
Explanation and Analysis:
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The Houyhnhnms Quotes in Gulliver's Travels

The Gulliver's Travels quotes below are all either spoken by The Houyhnhnms or refer to The Houyhnhnms. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Perspective Theme Icon
).
Book 4, Chapter 4 Quotes

Power, government, war, law, punishment, and a thousand other things, had no terms wherein that language could express them…

Related Characters: Lemuel Gulliver (speaker), The Houyhnhnms
Page Number: 225
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 4, Chapter 12 Quotes

I here take a final leave of all my courteous readers…to apply those excellent lessons of virtue which I learned among the Houyhnhmns; to instruct the Yahoos of my own family, is far as I shall find them docible animals; to behold my figure often in a glass, and thus, if possible, habituate myself by time to tolerate the sight of a human creatures…

Related Characters: Lemuel Gulliver (speaker), The Houyhnhnms, The Yahoos
Page Number: 270
Explanation and Analysis: