Jonathan Swift Quotes

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

Don't set your wit against a child.

Argument is the worst sort of conversation.

Every dog must have his day.

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

The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.

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.

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.

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

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

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

A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.

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

Many a truth is told in jest.

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

... the atheists, libertines, despisers of religion ... that is to say all those who usually pass under the name of Free-thinkers.

Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together; Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.

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

The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.

Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.

It is a miserable thing to live in suspense; it is the life of the spider.

I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world.

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

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

Ay, do despise me, I'm the prouder for it; I like to be despised.

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

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.

I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.

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

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

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

I never knew any man cured of inattention.

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

Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.

'T is an old maxim in the schools, That flattery 's the food of fools; Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit.

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

I must complain the cards are ill shuffled till I have a good hand.

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

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.

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

Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs, Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.

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

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

Vision is seeing the invisible.

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

I would rather be a freeman among slaves than a slave among freemen.

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

I love white Portugal wine better than claret, champagne, or burgundy. I have a sad vulgar appetite.

Undoubtedly, philosophers are in the right when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.

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