Jonathan Swift Quotes
Quotations and aphorisms by Jonathan Swift:
May you live all the days of your life.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
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
Link:
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
Link:
Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
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
Link:
It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
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
Link:
The want of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
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
Link:
We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
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
Link:
Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
Where there are large powers with little ambition... nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
Every dog must have his day.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
Books, the children of the brain.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
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
Link:
Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
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
Link:
Observation is an old man's memory.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
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
Link:
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
Link:
The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
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
Link:
Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
Principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
No wise man ever wished to be younger.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
Don't set your wit against a child.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
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
Link:
Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
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
Link:
Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
~Jonathan Swift
Link:
Share:
Permalink:
Browse: