Jonathan Swift quotations, famous quotes, aphorisms, ideas, opinions about man, life, human race, wits, ambition, heaven and love, that reveal his immense literary greatness.
Hic depositum est Corpus, IONATHAN SWIFT S.T.D. (Doctor of Sacred Theology), Hujus Ecclesiæ, athedralis Decani, Ubi sæva Indignatio, Ulterius, Cor lacerare nequit. Abi Viator Et imitare, si poteris, Strenuum pro virili, Libertatis Vindicatorem.
Jonathan Swift Epitaph
Swift has sailed into his rest; Savage indignation there Cannot lacerate his breast. Imitate him if you dare, World-besotted traveller; he Served human liberty.
W. B. Yeats
Whoever wishes to win in this game must have patience and money, since the values are so little constant and the rumors so little founded on truth vision is the art of seeing things invisible.
Jonathan Swift
Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
Jonathan Swift
I cannot but conclude that the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.
Jonathan Swift
When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
Jonathan Swift
What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.
Jonathan Swift
What some people invent the rest enlarge.
Jonathan Swift
We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
Jonathan Swift
We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
Jonathan Swift
Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.
Jonathan Swift
Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.
Jonathan Swift
Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
Jonathan Swift
Two friendships in two breasts requires the same aversions and desires.
Jonathan Swift
There’s none so blind as they that won’t see.
Jonathan Swift
There is nothing in this world constant but inconstancy.
Jonathan Swift
There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
Jonathan Swift
The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance and never to keep his work.
Jonathan Swift
The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.
Jonathan Swift
The most positive men are the most credulous.
Jonathan Swift
The latter part of a wise person’s life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.
Jonathan Swift
The lack of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.
Jonathan Swift
The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.
Jonathan Swift
Style may be defined as the proper words in the proper places.
Jonathan Swift
She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitch folk.
Jonathan Swift
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 of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.
Jonathan Swift
Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.
Jonathan Swift
Promises and pie crusts are made to be broken.
Jonathan Swift
Pretense is the overrating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to.
Jonathan Swift
Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.
Jonathan Swift
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
You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday
Jonathan Swift
Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
Jonathan Swift
One of the very best rules of conversation is to never, say anything which any of the company wish had been left unsaid.
Jonathan Swift
One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.
Jonathan Swift
Observation is an old man’s memory.
Jonathan Swift
O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee, whose graceless children scorn to own thee! . Yet thou hast greater cause to be ashamed of them, than they of thee.
Jonathan Swift
Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches to conceive how others can be in want.
Jonathan Swift
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
Nor do they trust their tongue alone, but speak a language of their own; can read a nod, a shrug, a look, far better than a printed book; convey a libel in a frown, and wink a reputation down.
Jonathan Swift
No wise man ever wished to be younger.
Jonathan Swift
Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
Jonathan Swift
May you live all the days of your life.
Jonathan Swift
Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
Jonathan Swift
It was a bold person that first ate an oyster.
Jonathan Swift
It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.
Jonathan Swift
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
It is as hard to satirize well a man of distinguished vices, as to praise well a man of distinguished virtues.
Jonathan Swift
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
Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.
Jonathan Swift
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
In church your grandsire cut his throat; to do the job too long he tarried: he should have had my hearty vote to cut his throat before he married.
Jonathan Swift
A company is like a dog, who dirts those most whom he loves best.
Jonathan Swift
If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.
Jonathan Swift
I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
Jonathan Swift
I said there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are as slaves.
Jonathan Swift
I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
Jonathan Swift
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
I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.
Jonathan Swift
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.
Jonathan Swift
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 by water.
Jonathan Swift
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
He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers.
Jonathan Swift
Happiness is a perpetual possession of being well deceived.
Jonathan Swift
For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labor, and search, and ranging through every corner of nature; the difference is that instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
Jonathan Swift
Faith! He must make his stories shorter or change his comrades once a quarter.
Jonathan Swift
Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.
Jonathan Swift
Don’t set your wit against a child.
Jonathan Swift
Complaint is the largest tribute Heaven receives.
Jonathan Swift
Come, agree, the law’s costly.
Jonathan Swift
Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
Jonathan Swift
But you think that it is time for me to have done with the world, and so I would if I could get into a better before I was called into the best, and not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.
Jonathan Swift
Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.
Jonathan Swift
As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.
Jonathan Swift
As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
Jonathan Swift
Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as in books it is generally the worst sort of reading.
Jonathan Swift
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.
Jonathan Swift
Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping.
Jonathan Swift
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
All human race would be wits. And millions miss, for one that hits.
Jonathan Swift
A wise man ought to have money in his head, but not in his heart.
Jonathan Swift
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?
Jonathan Swift
