Praise is the daughter of present power.

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

Seamen have a custom, when they meet a whale, to fling him out an empty tub by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the ship.

Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation td posterity? Let him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments.

Nothing is so great an instance of ill-manners as flattery.

The tiny Lilliputians surmise that Gulliver's watch may be his god, because it is that which, he admits, he seldom does anything without consulting.

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