Jonathan Swift Men Quotations

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

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

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.

He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.

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

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

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.

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

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

Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.

Men are contented to be laughed at for their wit, but not for their folly

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

Small causes are sufficient to make a man uneasy, when great ones are not in the way: for want of a block he will stumble at a straw.

When men grow virtuous in their old age, they are merely making a sacrifice to God of the Devil's leavings

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

There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them.

One principal object of good-breeding is to suit our behaviour to the three several degrees of men, our superiors, our equals, and those below us.

He that calls a man ungrateful sums up all the veil that a man can be guilty of.

The motives of the best actions will not bear too strict an inquiry. It is allowed that the cause of most actions, good or bad, may be resolved into the love of ourselves; but the self-love of some men inclines them to please others, and the self-love of others is wholly employed in pleasing themselves. This makes the great distinction between virtue and vice.

Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.

I have heard of a man who had a mind to sell his house, and therefore carried a piece of brick in his pocket, which he shewed as a pattern to encourage purchasers.

Hail, follow, well met, All dirty and wet: Find out, if you can, Who's master, who's man.

Observation is an old man's memory.

Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination.

I said there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are as slaves.

Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect.

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

A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.

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

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.

Ale is meat, drink and cloth; it will make a cat speak and a wise man dumb.

For to enter the palace of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms, therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back-door

Men of wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.

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.

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.

How often do we contradict the right rules of reason in the whole course of our lives! Reason itself is true and just, but the reason of every particular man is weak and wavering, perpetually swayed and turned by his interests, his passions, and his vices.

Conscience signifies that knowledge which a man hath of his own thoughts and actions; and because, if a man judgeth fairly of his actions by comparing them with the law of God, his mind will approve or condemn him; this knowledge or conscience may be both an accuser and a judge.

There is no talent so useful toward rising in the world, or which puts men more out of the reach of fortune, than that quality generally possessed by the dullest sort of men, and in common speech called discretion; a species of lower prudence, by the assistance of which, people of the meanest intellectuals, without any other qualification, pass through the world in great tranquillity, and with universal good treatment, neither giving nor taking offence.

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.

Modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.

Surely mortal man is a broomstick!

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.

Common fluency of speech in many men and most women is owing to a scarcity of matter.

Such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up.

There are but three ways for a man to revenge himself of the censure of the world,--to despise it, to return the like, or to endeavor to live so as to avoid it; the first of these is usually pretended, the last is almost impossible, the universal practice is for the second.

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

I never knew any man cured of inattention.

Nature has left every man a capacity of being agreeable, though not of shining in company; and there are a hundred men sufficiently qualified for both who, by a very few faults, that they might correct in half an hour, are not so much as tolerable.

When you set about your composing, it may be necessary for your ease, and better distillation of wit, to put on your worst clothes, and the worse the better; for an author, like a limbeck, will yield the better for having a rag about him: besides that, I have observed a gardener cut the outward rind of a tree (which is the surtout of it) to make it bear well; and this is a natural account of the usual poverty of poets, and is an argument why wits, of all men living, ought to be ill clad.

Desponding Phyllis was endu'd With ev'ry Talent of a Prude, She trembled when a Man drew near; Salute her, and she turn'd her Ear: If o'er against her you were plac'd She durst not look above your Waist

When a man of genius appears in the world, it is immediately recognized by the fact that all the blockheads join forces against him.

If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.

When a man is made a spiritual peer he loses his surname; when a temporal, his Christian name.

Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company.

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.

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

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.

When any one person or body of men seize into their hands the power in the last resort, there is properly no longer a government, but what Aristotle and his followers call the abuse and corruption of one.

So endless and exorbitant are the desires of men that they will grasp at all, and can form no scheme of perfect happiness with less.

No man of honor, as the word is usually understood, did ever pretend that his honor obliged him to be chaste or temperate, to pay his creditors, to be useful to his country, to do good to mankind, to endeavor to be wise or learned, to regard his word, his promise, or his oath.

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

Men always grow vicious before they become unbelievers.

Have you not observed that there is a lower kind of discretion and regularity, which seldom fails of raising men to the highest station in the court, the church, and the law?

Brisk talkers are usually slow thinkers. There is, indeed, no wild beast more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate. If you are civil to the voluble they will abuse your patience; if brusque, your character.

The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter and a scarcity of words; for whosoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt, in speaking, to hesitate upon the choice of both.

I used to wonder how a man of birth and spirit could endure to be wholly insignificant and obscure in a foreign country, when he might live with lustre in his own.

When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.

The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclined men in the course of virtue, but seldom or ever reclaims the vicious.

'T is 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.

For want of a block, man will stumble at a straw.

For in that universal call, Few bankers will to heaven be mounters; They'll cry, "Ye shops, upon us fall! Conceal and cover us, ye counters! When other hands the scales shall hold, And they, in men's and angels' sight Produced with all their bills and gold, 'Weigh'd in the balance and found light!'

If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning etc., beginning from his youth, and so go to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last.

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.

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.

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

Punning is a talent which no man affects to despise but he that is without it.

Some men, under the notion of weeding out prejudice, eradicate virtue, honesty and religion.

Nothing more unqualified the man to act with prudence than a misfortune that is attended with shame and guilt.

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

Who can deny that all men are violent lovers of the truth, when we see them so positive in their errors, which they will maintain out of their zeal for truth, although they contradict themselves every day of their lives.

The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word.

For poetry, he's past his prime, He takes an hour to find a rhyme; His fire is out, his wit decayed, His fancy sunk, his muse a jade. I'd have him throw away his pen, But there's no talking to some men.

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

I have known some men possessed of good qualities which were very serviceable to others, but useless to themselves; like a sun-dial on the front of a house, to inform the neighbours and passengers, but not the owner within.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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

Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.

In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man uncapable of holding any public station; for, since kings avow themselves to be the deputies of Providence.

A wise man will find us to be rogues by our faces.

Liberty of conscience is nowadays only understood to be the liberty of believing what men please, but also of endeavoring to propagate that belief as much as they can.