Quotes by Jonathan Swift

• 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 a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
• Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.
• Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.
• Where there are large powers with little ambition... nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes.
• Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
• A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.
• Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.
• It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.
• Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.
• 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.
• Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.
• If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.
• I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
• I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
• I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.
• I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.
• Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.
• He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
• It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.
• He was a bold man that first eat an oyster.
• Books, the children of the brain.
• Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
• Don't set your wit against a child.
• Every dog must have his day.
• Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
• A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying... that he is wiser today than yesterday.
• 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.
• A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
• Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.
• As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.
• As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
• Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps 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.
• A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.
• Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
• For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
• Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.
• We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
• Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.
• Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
• There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.
• There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
• The want of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.
• The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
• The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.
• The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.
• The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.
• The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.
• Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.
• It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.
• Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
• May you live all the days of your life.
• Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
• Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting.
• My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
• No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.
• Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.
• 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.
• Observation is an old man's memory.
• Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
• One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.
• Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
• Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers because, whoever shares his thoughts with the public will convince them as he himself appears convinced.
• What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.
• No wise man ever wished to be younger.
• There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
• Don't wait for the light at the end of the tunnel, light it yourself along the way.
• Success is not defined by what you accomplish, but by how you inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more.
• Do not fear the shadows, for they only mean that there is light shining somewhere nearby.
• Success is not defined by the applause of others, but by the happiness found within your own heart.
• Success is not measured by the trophies on your shelf, but by the love in your heart and the kindness in your actions.
• Vision is the art of seeing things invisible to others.
• Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others
• Success is like a banana split; it tends to make everything around you a little more enjoyable, but it all drips away if you don't stay patient.
• Life consists not in holding good cards, but in playing those you hold well.