For the qualities of sheer wit and humor, Swift had no superior, ancient or modern.

Many birds and beasts are...as fit to go to Heaven as many human beings - people who talk of their seats there with as much confidence as if they had booked them at a box office.

The very greatest genius, after all, is not the greatest thing in the world, any more than the greatest city in the world is the country or the sky. It is the concentration of some of its greatest powers, but it is not the greatest diffusion of its might. It is not the habit of its success, the stability of its sereneness.

If you are ever at a loss to support a flagging conversation, introduce the subject of eating.

Patience and gentleness is power.

There is no greater mistake in the world than the looking upon every sort of nonsense as want of sense.

Anglers boast of the innocence of their pastime; yet it puts fellow-creatures to the torture. They pique themselves on their meditative faculties; and yet their only excuse is a want of thought.