Jonathan Swift Quotes

Flattery is the worst and falsest way of showing our esteem.

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

Observation is an old man's memory.

I forget whether advice be among the lost things which Ariosto says are to be found in the moon: that and time ought to have been there.

Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.

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

Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.

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.

The scholars of Ireland seem not to have the least conception of style, but run on in a flat phraseology, often mingled with barbarous terms.

Have you not observed that there is a lower kind of discretion and regularity, which seldom fails of raising men to the highest station in the court, the church, and the law?

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

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.

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

He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.

Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.

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

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.

There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.

There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.

It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.

It is computed that eleven thousand persons have at several times suffered death rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end.

Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company.

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

In all distresses of our friends We first consult our private ends; While Nature, kindly bent to ease us, Points out some circumstance to please us.

I know Sir John will go, though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs.

When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.

Some dire misfortune to portend, no enemy can match a friend.

Rhetoric in serious discourses is like the flowers in corn; pleasing to those who come only for amusement, but prejudicial to him who would reap profit from it.

There is no quality so contrary to any nature which one cannot affect, and put on upon occasion, in order to serve an interest.

The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk.

Hobbes clearly proves, that every creature Lives in a state of war by nature.

I cannot imagine why we should be at the expense to furnish wit for succeeding ages, when the former have made no sort of provision for ours.

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

Possession, they say, is eleven points of the law.

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

The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.

Praise is the daughter of present power.

Pray steal me not, I'm Mrs. Dingley's, Whose heart in this four-footed thing lies.

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

When a real genius appeares in this world, you'll know him by the fact that all the fools have allied against him.

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

Perpetual aiming at wit is a very bad part of conversation. It is done to support a character: it generally fails; it is a sort of insult on the company, and a restraint upon the speaker.

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

By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty.

The chameleon, who is said to feed upon nothing but air, has of all animals the nimblest tongue.

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.

It is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they are employed on as when they have lost their edge.

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

Old sciences are unraveled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot.

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