Jonathan Swift Quotes (188 Quotes)


    He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers.

    I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.

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

    In the school of political projectors, I was but ill entertained, the professors appearing, in my judgment, wholly out of their senses which is a scene that never fails to make me melancholy. These unhappy people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favorites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue of teaching ministers to consult the public good of rewarding merit, great abilities, and eminent services, of instructing princes to know their true interest, by placing it on the same foundation with that of their people of choosing for employment persons qualified to exercise them with many other wild impossible chimeras, that never entered before into the heart of man to conceive and confirmed in me the old observation, that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational which some philosophers have not maintained for truth.




    It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.

    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.

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

    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

    Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe how much it altered her person for the worse.


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

    It is likewise to be observed that this society hath a peculiar chant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply.

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

    Whoever wishes to win in this game must have patience and money, since the values are so little constant and the rumors so little founded on truth Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.

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

    But you think... that it is time for me to have done with the world, and so I would if I could get into a better before I was called into the best, and not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.

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

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

    Principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.

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


    She 's no chicken she 's on the wrong side of thirty, if she be a day.

    Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting.


    Pride, ill nature, and want of sense are the three great sources of ill manners without some one of these defects, no man will behave himself ill for want of experience, or what, in the language of fools, is called knowing the world

    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.

    This is the sublime and refined point of felicity, called, the possession of being well deceived the serene peaceful state of being a fool among knaves.

    There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.

    Where there are large powers with little ambition... nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes.

    Brutes find out where their talents lie A bear will not attempt to fly, A foundered horse will oft debate Before he tries a five barred gate. A dog by instinct turns aside Who sees the ditch too deep and wide, But man we find the only creature Who, led by folly, combats nature Who, when she loudly cries Forbear With obstinacy fixes there And where the genius least inclines, Absurdly bends his whole designs.

    Faith He must make his stories shorter or change his comrades once a quarter.

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

    A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention, by false speaking, to deceive and injure your neighbour.

    A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.

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


    The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.

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


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

    Religion is too often talked of, but too little known.

    Your notions of friendship are new to me I believe every man is born with his quantum, and he cannot give to one without robbing another. I very well know to whom I would give the first place in my friendship, but they are not in the way, I am condemned to another scene, and therefore I distribute it in pennyworths to those about me, and who displease me least, and should do the same to my fellow prisoners if I were condemned to a jail.


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

    Two friendships in two breasts requires The same aversions and desires.

    There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.



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