Jonathan Swift Quotes

Nothing more unqualified the man to act with prudence than a misfortune that is attended with shame and guilt.

Bachelor's fare: bread and cheese, and kisses.

The affectation of some late authors to introduce and multiply cant words is the most ruinous corruption in any language.

An intelligent person should put money in the beginning, but not in heart

A pleasant companion is as good as a coach.

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

Argument is the worst sort of conversation.

Complaint is the largest tribute heaven receives and the sincerest part of our devotion.

Brisk talkers are generally slow thinkers.

What vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me, although I am not so old in proportion to them as I formerly was: which I can prove by arithmetic, for then I was double their age, which now I am not. Letter to Alexander Pope. 7 Feb. 1736.

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

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.

He that calls a man ungrateful sums up all the veil that a man can be guilty of.

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.

When dunces are satiric, I take it for a panegyric.

I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.

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.

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

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

An atheist has got one point beyond the devil.

A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious and low.

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.

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

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

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

Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.

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.

A fig for your bill of fare; show me your bill of company.

Brutes find out where their talents lie; A bear will not attempt to fly, A foundered horse will oft debate Before he tries a five barred gate. A dog by instinct turns aside Who sees the ditch too deep and wide, But man we find the only creature Who, led by folly, combats nature; Who, when she loudly cries-Forbear! With obstinacy fixes there; And where the genius least inclines, Absurdly bends his whole designs.

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

The translators of the Bible were masters of an English style much fitter for that work than any we see in our present writings; the which is owing to the simplicity that runs through the whole.

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

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

There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.

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.

God hath intended our passions to prevail over reason.

The lack of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.

Physicians ought not to give their judgment of religion, for the same reason that butchers are not admitted to be jurors upon life and death.

Judges... are picked out from the most dextrous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy, and having been biased all their lives against truth or equity, are under such a fatal necessity of favoring fraud, perjury and oppression, that I have known several of them to refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty by doing any thing unbecoming their nature in office.

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

An English tongue, if refined to a certain standard, might perhaps be fixed forever.

Men of wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.

It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next. "Future ages shall talk of this; they shall be famous to all posterity;" whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now.

She 's no chicken; she 's on the wrong side of thirty, if she be a day.

What we call the Irish Brogue is no sooner discovered, than it makes the deliverer, in the last degree, ridiculous and despised; and, from such a mouth, an Englishman expects nothing but bulls, blunders, and follies.

Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.

Under the rose, since here are none but friends, To own the truth we have some private ends.