Jonathan swift quotes

Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.

I have known some men possessed of good qualities which were very serviceable to others, but useless to themselves; like a sun-dial on the front of a house, to inform the neighbours and passengers, but not the owner within.

Come, agree, the law's costly.

My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.

Blot out, correct, insert, refine, enlarge, diminish, interline. Be mindful, when invention fails. To scratch your head and bite your nails.

It is the talent of human nature to run from one extreme to another.

Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.

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

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

It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.

Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.

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

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

Exploding many things under the name of trifles is a very false proof either of wisdom or magnanimity, and a great check to virtuous actions with regard to fame.

Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.

All human race would be wits. And millions miss, for one that hits.

Vision is seeing the invisible.

Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.

Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.

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

I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.

The various opinions of philosophers have scattered through the world as many plagues of the mind as Pandora's box did those of the body; only with this difference, that they have not left hope at the bottom.

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.

Patience alleviates, as impatience augments, pain; thus persons of strong will suffer less than those who give way to irritation.

Every day is an opportunity to make a new happy ending. May you live all the days of your life.

Conversation is but carving! Give no more to every guest Than he's able to digest.

For to enter the palace of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms, therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back-door

What poet would not grieve to see His brother write as well as he? But rather than they should excel, He'd wish his rivals all in Hell.

Live every day as your last, because one of these days, it will be.

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.

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.

Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.

Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone.

We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.

That incessant envy wherewith the common rate of mankind pursues all superior natures to their own.

Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it.

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

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

Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired

A lie is an excuse guarded

A true critic, in the perusal of a book, is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones.

Brisk talkers are usually slow thinkers. There is, indeed, no wild beast more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate. If you are civil to the voluble they will abuse your patience; if brusque, your character.

In men desire begets love, and in women love begets desire.

I love good creditable acquaintance; I love to be the worst of the company.

A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.

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.

So geographers, in Africa maps, With savage pictures fill their gaps, And o'er uninhabitable downs Place elephants for want of towns

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

Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect.

Religion seems to have grown an infant with age, and requires miracles to nurse it, as it had in its infancy.

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

Brisk talkers are generally slow thinkers.

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.

I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.

Two friendships in two breasts requires The same aversions and desires.

A secret is seldom safe in more than one breast.

T is as cheap sitting as standing.

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.

The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter and a scarcity of words; for whosoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt, in speaking, to hesitate upon the choice of both.

Hail fellow, well met.

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

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.

A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.

Quotations are best brought in to confirm some opinion controverted.

Arbitrary power is the natural object of temptation to a prince, as wine and women to a young fellow, or a bribe to a judge, or avarice to old age.

War: that mad game the world so loves to play.

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.

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

Few are qualified to shine in company, but it is in most men's power to be agreeable.

The best Maxim I know in this life is, to drink your Coffee when you can, and when you cannot, to be easy without it.

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

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

One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.

When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the good side or circumstances of it; when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad ones.

You cannot reason a person out of something they were not reasoned into.

May you live all the days of your life.

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

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.

Cruel people are ever cowards in emergency.

To acknowledge you were wrong yesterday is simply to let the world know that you are wiser today than you were then.

Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.

Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.

There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.

It is the first rule in oratory that a man must appear such as he would persuade others to be: and that can be accomplished only by the force of his life.

I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and all my love is toward individuals.

The ruin of a State is generally preceded by an universal degeneracy of manners and contempt of religion.

Tis nothing when you are used to it.

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

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

You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

If you were not reasoned into your beliefs, you cannot be reasoned out of them.

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.

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

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

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

Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.

Whence proceeds this weight we lay On what detracting people say? Their utmost malice cannot make Your head, or tooth, or finger ache; Nor spoil your shapes, distort your face, Or put one feature out of place.

A wise man will find us to be rogues by our faces.

It often happens that, if a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done its work, and there is no further occasion for it.

Don't set your wit against a child.

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

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.

Many a truth is told in jest.

This Day, whate'er the Fates decree; Shall still be kept with Joy by me: This Day then, let us not be told, That you are sick, and I grown old

For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.

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.

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.

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

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

He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.

There is no vice which mankind carries to such wild extremes as that of avarice.

Although the devil be the father of lies, he seems, like other great inventors, to have lost much of his reputation by the continual improvements that have been made upon him.

Small causes are sufficient to make a man uneasy, when great ones are not in the way: for want of a block he will stumble at a straw.

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

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.

Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible.

Every dog must have his day.

A chuck under the chin is worth two kisses.

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

It is remarkable with what Christian fortitude and resignation we can bear the suffering of other folks.

Argument is the worst sort of conversation.

No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore, money is better than counsel.

Party is the madness of many for the gain of a few.