Jonathan Swift Quotes

Perverseness is your whole defence.

No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore, money is better than counsel.

Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.

A favor is half granted, when graciously refused.

A pleasant companion is as good as a coach.

Everyone desires long life, not one old age.

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.

Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired

Rebukes are easy from our betters, From men of quality and letters; But when low dunces will affront, What man alive can stand the brunt?

Walls have tongues, and hedges ears.

The greatest Inventions were produced in Times of Ignorance; as the Use of the Compass, Gunpowder, and Printing; and by the dullest Nation, as the Germans.

The sciences are found, like Hercules's oxen, by tracing them backward; and old sciences are unravelled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot.

Few are qualified to shine in company, but it is in most men's power to be agreeable.

A traveler's chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad-as well as good example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.

Neither are any wars so furious and bloody, or of so long continuance as those occasioned by difference in opinion, especially if it be in things indifferent.

All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor; it is like spending this year part of the next year's revenue.

Usually speaking, the worst-bred person in company is a young traveller just returned from abroad.

Sweeping from butcher's stalls, dung, guts, and blood, Drown'd puppies, stinking sprats, all drench'd in mud, Dead cats, and turnip-tops, come tumbling down the flood.

In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.

Books, like men their authors, have no more than one wayofcoming intothe world, but there areten thousand to go out of it, and return no more.

She has more goodness in her little finger than he has in his whole body.

A stander-by may sometimes, perhaps, see more of the game than he that plays it.

She watches him as a cat would watch a mouse.

Not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.

Dignity, high station, or great riches, are in some sort necessary to old men, in order to keep the younger at a distance, who are otherwise too apt to insult them upon the score of their age.

If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.

That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.

Tis nothing when you are used to it.

Blot out, correct, insert, refine, enlarge, diminish, interline. Be mindful, when invention fails. To scratch your head and bite your nails.

What poet would not grieve to see His brother write as well as he? But rather than they should excel, He'd wish his rivals all in Hell.

In men desire begets love, and in women love begets desire.

A ridiculous passion which hath no being but in play-books and romances.

I love good creditable acquaintance; I love to be the worst of the company.

All human race would be wits. And millions miss, for one that hits.

Quotations are best brought in to confirm some opinion controverted.

This Day, whate'er the Fates decree; Shall still be kept with Joy by me: This Day then, let us not be told, That you are sick, and I grown old

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.

Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters.

If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.

Men who possess all the advantages of life are in a state where there are many accidents to disorder and discompose, but few to please them.

My hunger serves me instead of a clock.

When we are old, our friends find it difficult to please us, and are less concerned whether we be pleased or not.

Real vision is the ability to see the invisible.

My horses understand me tolerably well; I converse with them at least four hours every day. They are strangers to bridle or saddle; they live in great amity with me, and friendship of each other.

The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little.

Life is a tragedy wherein we sit as spectators for a while and then act our part in it.

Strange an astrologer should die, without one wonder in the sky.

For though, in nature, depth and height Are equally held infinite: In poetry, the height we know; 'Tis only infinite below.

Ah, a German and a genius ! A prodigy, admit him !

Neither is it safe to count upon the weakness of any man's understanding, who is thoroughly possessed of the spirit of revenge to sharpen his invention.