Jonathan Swift Quotes

Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.

You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday

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

Every dog must have his day.

Proper words in proper places make the true definition of style.

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and all my love is toward individuals: for instance, I hate the tribe of lawyers, but I love Counsellor Such-a-one, and Judge Such-a-one: so with physicians"”I will not speak of my own trade"”soldiers, English, Scotch, French, and the rest. But principally I hate and detest that animal called man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth. This is the system upon which I have governed myself many years, but do not tell...

That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.

And he gave it for his opinion, "that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.

We of this age have discovered a shorter, and more prudent method to become scholars and wits, without the fatigue of reading or of thinking.

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

Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind reception it meets with in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.

Happiness is the perpetual possession of being well deceived.

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

If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.

Some men, under the notion of weeding out prejudice, eradicate virtue, honesty and religion.

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

There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.

When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.

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

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

Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.

Argument is the worst sort of conversation.

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.

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

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

I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.

There's none so blind as they that won't see.

When the world has once begun to use us ill, it afterwards continues the same treatment with less scruple or ceremony, as men do to a whore

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

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

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

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

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.

The worthiest people are the most injured by slander, as is the best fruit which the birds have been pecking at.

Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping.

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.

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

'T is an old maxim in the schools, That flattery 's the food of fools; Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit.

Flattery is the worst and falsest way of showing our esteem.

Bread is the staff of life.

A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.

She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork.

They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.

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

Faith, that's as well said as if I had said it myself.

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.

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.

I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.

Complaint is the largest tribute Heaven receives.

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

It is as hard to satirize well a man of distinguished vices, as to praise well a man of distinguished virtues.

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

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.

A lie is an excuse guarded

There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.

A footman may swear; but he cannot swear like a lord. He can swear as often: but can he swear with equal delicacy, propriety, and judgment?

I know Sir John will go, though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs.

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

When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.

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

And surely one of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish had been left unsaid"¦

Usually speaking, the worst-bred person in company is a young traveller just returned from abroad.

I always love to begin a journey on Sundays, because I shall have the prayers of the church to preserve all that travel by land, or water.

All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain and languor; it's like spending this year part of next year's revenue.

No preacher is listened to but time, which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have in vain tried to put into our heads before.

I have now lost my barrier between me and death; God grant I may live to be as well prepared for it, as I confidently believe her to have been! If the way to Heaven be through piety, truth, justice and charity, she is there.

Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.

How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice when they will not so much as take warning.

Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as in books it is generally the worst sort of reading.