Quotes by Jonathan Swift

A penny for your thoughts.

Beauty, like supreme dominion is best supported by opinion.

Venus, a beautiful, good-natured lady, was the goddess of love.

And though the villain 'scape a while, he feels. Slow vengeance, like a bloodhound, at his heels.

The example alone of a vicious prince will corrupt an age; but that of a good one will not reform it.

Or darns his hose, or mends his breeches, While Harry's fencing up his ditches.

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

The more careless, the more modish.

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

Hay is for horses.

Bread is the staff of life.

Drive gently over the stones.

He at fit periods walk through Aries, however our earthly motions varies.

One of the best rules of conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish had been left unsaid.

Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.

Promises and pie crusts are made to be broken.

Coffee makes us severe, and grave, and philosophical.

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.

Observation is an old man's memory.

One of the very best rules of conversation is to never, say anything which any of the company wish had been left unsaid.

And though the villain 'scape a while, he feels
Slow vengeance, like a bloodhound, at his heels.

No preacher is listened to but time; which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have tried in vain to put into our heads.

It is with theories as with wells; you may see to the bottom of the deepest if there be any water there, while another shall pass for wondrous profound when it is merely shallow, dark, and empty.

It is an uncontrolled truth, that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them.

Although men are accused for not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps as 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.

Without simplicity no human performance can arrive at perfection.

What some invent the rest enlarge.

Convey a libel in a frown,
And wink a reputation down!

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

Promises and pie-crusts are made to be broken.

We should never wed an opinion for better or for worse; what we take upon good grounds, we should lay down upon better.

As the common forms of good manners were intended for regulating the conduct of those who have weak understandings; so they have been corrupted by the persons for whose use they were contrived.

As the best law is founded upon reason, so are the best manners. And as some lawyers have introduced unreasonable things into common law, so likewise many teachers have introduced absurd things into common good manners.

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse; whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy is the best bred man in company.

It is idle to propose remedies before we are assured of the disease.

When a great genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

'Tis 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.

Fame and censure, with a tether,

By fate are always link'd together.

'Tis nothing when you are used to it.

A virtue but at second-hand;
They blush because they understand.

When the belly is full, the bones would be at rest.

How haughtily he cocks his nose, To tell what every schoolboy knows.

You may say, I am hot; I say I am not,
Only warm, as the subject on which I am got.

Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping.

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

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

A poor spirit is poorer than a poor purse. A very few pounds a year would ease a man of the scandal of avarice.

Argument is the worst sort of conversation.

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

Apollo was held the god of physic and sender of disease. Both were originally the same trade, and still continue.

There's none so blind as they that won't see.

A carpenter is known by his chips.

Conversation is but carving! Give no more to every guest Than he's able to digest.

Gulliver describes a royal personage inspiring awe among the tiny Lilliputians because he was taller than his brethren by the breadth of a human fingernail.

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

It is in disputes as in armies, where the weaker side sets up false lights, and makes a great noise, to make the enemy believe them more numerous and strong than they really are.

In all I wish, how happy should I be,

Thou grand Deluder, were it not for thee?

So weak thou art that fools thy power despise;

And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise.

Arbitrary power is but the first natural step from anarchy, or the savage life.

Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age.

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?

Let a man be ne'er so wise, he may be caught with sober lies.

Swift has sailed into his rest;
Savage indignation there
Cannot lacerate his Breast.
Imitate him if you dare,
World-Besotted Traveler; he
Served human liberty.

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

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

Love of flattery, in most men, proceeds from the mean opinion they have of themselves; in women, from the contrary.

Nothing is so great an instance of ill-manners as flattery.

A lie is an excuse guarded.

Hail fellow, well met.

It is the talent of human nature to run from one extreme to another.

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

An idle reason lessens the weight of the good ones you gave before.

The system of morality to be gathered from the ancient sages falls very short of that delivered in the gospel.

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

It is the first rule in oratory that a man must appear such as he would persuade others to be: and that can be accomplished only by the force of his life.

Oh how our neighbour lifts his nose,

To tell what every schoolboy knows.

I have now lost my barrier between me and death; God grant I may live to be as well prepared for it, as I confidently believe her to have been! If the way to Heaven be through piety, truth, justice and charity, she is there.

For, if we take an examination of what is generally understood by happiness, as it has respect either to the understanding or the senses, we shall find all its properties and adjuncts will herd under this short definition: that it is a perpetual possession of being well deceived.

Quotations are best brought in to confirm some opinion controverted.

In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.

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.

I am of the level with common Astrologers; who, with an old paltry cant, and a few pot-hooks for planets to amuse the vulgar, have too long been suffered to abuse the world.

Pedantry is properly the over-rating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to.

We of this age have discovered a shorter, and more prudent method to become scholars and wits, without the fatigue of reading or of thinking.

Story-telling is subject to two unavoidable defects, -- frequent repetition and being soon exhausted; so that, whoever values this gift in himself, has need of a good memory, and ought frequently to shift his company.

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.

It is a maxim, that those, to whom everybody allows the second place, have an undoubted title to the first.

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

Vision is seeing the invisible.

O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee, whose graceless children scorn to own thee! . Yet thou hast greater cause to be ashamed of them, than they of thee.

When the world has once begun to use us ill, it afterwards continues the same treatment with less scruple or ceremony, as men do to a whore.

Satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any.

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

The ruin of a State is generally preceded by an universal degeneracy of manners and contempt of religion.

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

A footman may swear; but he cannot swear like a lord. He can swear as often: but can he swear with equal delicacy, propriety, and judgment?

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

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.

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