Jonathan Swift Quotes (188 Quotes)



    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.

    This made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavor to do himself honor among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him.

    And I remember in frequent discourses with my master concerning the nature of manhood, in other parts of the world, having occasion to talk of lying and false representationà For he argued thus; that the use of speech was to make us understand one another, and to receive information of facts; now if any one said the thing which was not, these ends were defeatedà àhe leaves me worse than in ignorance, for I am led to believe a thing black when it is white, and short when it is long.

    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.


    I desired that the Senate of Rome might appear before me in one large chamber, and a modern representative, in counterview, in another. The first seemed to be an assembly of heroes and demi-gods; the other, a knot of pedlars, pick-pockets, highwaymen, and bullies.

    Ingratitude is amongst them a capital crime, as we read it to have been in some other countries: for they reason thus; that whoever makes ill-returns to his benefactor, must needs be a common enemy to the rest of the mankind, from where he has received no obligations and therefore such man is not fit to live.

    Judges... are picked out from the most dextrous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy, and having been biased all their lives against truth or equity, are under such a fatal necessity of favoring fraud, perjury and oppression, that I have known several of them to refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty by doing any thing unbecoming their nature in office.

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

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

    Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.

    As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.

    Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.


    Do you think I was born in a wood to be afraid of an owl.

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

    Style may defined as the proper words in the proper places.

    For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.

    Dreams are mere productions of the brain, And fools consult interpreters in vain.

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


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

    A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in w

    Pretense is the overrating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to.

    I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.


    Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.



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

    That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.

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

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

    Deaf, giddy, helpless, left alone, To all my friends a burden grown No more I hear my church's bell Than if it rang out for my knell At thunder now no more I start Than at the rumbling of a cart

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

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

    What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.

    Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.

    Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.

    Indeed, Madame, your ladyship is very sparing of your tea I protest the last I took was no more than water bewitched

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

    A fool can ask more questions than the wisest can answer.

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

    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

    Instead of dirt and poison we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.

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

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

    Venus, a beautiful, good-natured lady, was the goddess of love Juno, a terrible shrew, the goddess of marriage and they were always mortal enemies

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

    Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.


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    - Gulliver's Travels

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