Jonathan Swift Quotations | Page 2

So weak thou art that fools thy power despise; And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise.

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

A wise man is never less alone than when he is alone

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

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

In all distresses of our friends We first consult our private ends

Taverns are places where madness is sold by the bottle

Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches to conceive how others can be in want.

That's as well said as if I had said it myself

So, naturalists observe, a flea - Hath smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller still to bite 'em; And so proceed ad infinitum

The greatest inventions were produced in the times of ignorance, as the use of the compass, gunpowder, and printing

All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor; it is like spending this year part of the next year's revenues

That incessant envy wherewith the common rate of mankind pursues all superior natures to their own.

Orators inflame the people, whose anger is really but a short fit of madness.

Perverseness is your whole defence.

The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk.

Though Diogenes lived in a tub, there might be, for aught I know, as much pride under his rags, as in the fine-spun garments of the divine Plato.

There seems to be no part of knowledge in fewer hands than that of discerning when to have done.

A fig for your bill of fare; show me your bill of company.

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

Cruel people are ever cowards in emergency.

A chuck under the chin is worth two kisses.

Oh how our neighbour lifts his nose, To tell what every schoolboy knows.

Patience alleviates, as impatience augments, pain; thus persons of strong will suffer less than those who give way to irritation.

A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious and low.

A maxim in law has more weight in the world than an article of faith.

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

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

Every age might perhaps produce one or two geniuses, if they were not sunk under the censure and obloquy of plodding, servile, imitating pedants.

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

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

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.

I forget whether advice be among the lost things which Ariosto says are to be found in the moon: that and time ought to have been there.

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

Big-endians and small-endians.

The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides, While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides.

It is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they are employed on as when they have lost their edge.

A forward critic often dupes us With sham quotations peri hupsos, And if we have not read Longinus, Will magisterially outshine us. Then, lest with Greek he over-run ye, Procure the book for love or money, Translated from Boileau's translation, And quote quotation on quotation.

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.

They say fish should swim thrice * * * first it should swim in the sea (do you mind me?) then it should swim in butter, and at last, sirrah, it should swim in good claret.

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.

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

Religion supposed Heaven and Hell, the word of God, and sacraments, and twenty other circumstances which, taken seriously, are a wonderful check to wit and humour.

... the atheists, libertines, despisers of religion ... that is to say all those who usually pass under the name of Free-thinkers.

This wine should be eaten, it is too good to be drunk.

Faith, that's as well said as if I had said it myself.

Polite Conversation Why, everyone one as they like; as the good woman said when she kissed her cow.

111 company is like a dog, who dirts those most whom he loves best.

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.

Ah, a German and a genius ! A prodigy, admit him !

We have an intuitive sense of our duty.

The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little.

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.

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

The most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study.

Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it.

You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place.

Many a truth is told in jest.

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.

War: that mad game the world so loves to play.

You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday

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

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

Ay, do despise me, I'm the prouder for it; I like to be despised.

Argument is the worst sort of conversation.

A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.

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.

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.

The various opinions of philosophers have scattered through the world as many plagues of the mind as Pandora's box did those of the body; only with this difference, that they have not left hope at the bottom.

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.

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

And he gave it for his opinion, "that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.

I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and all my love is toward individuals: for instance, I hate the tribe of lawyers, but I love Counsellor Such-a-one, and Judge Such-a-one: so with physicians—I will not speak of my own trade—soldiers, English, Scotch, French, and the rest. But principally I hate and detest that animal called man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth. This is the system upon which I have governed myself many years, but do not tell...

If a lump of soot falls into the soup and you cannot conveniently get it out, stir it well in and it will give the soup a French taste.

If it were a rainy day, a drunken vigil, a fit of the spleen, a course of physic, sleepy Sunday, an ill run at dice, a long tailor's bill, a beggar's purse, a factious head, a hot sun, costive diet, want of books, and a just contempt for learning - but for these. . .the number of authors and of writing would dwindle away to a degree most woeful to behold.

Wisdom is a fox who, after long hunting, will at last cost you the pains to dig out; it is a cheese, which, by how much the richer, has the thicker, the homlier, and the coarser coat; and whereof to a judicious palate, the maggots are best. It is a sack posset, wherein the deeper you go, you'll find it the sweeter. Wisdom is a hen, whose cackling we must value and consider, because it is attended with an egg. But lastly, it is a nut, which, unless you choose with judgment, may cost you a tooth, and pay you with nothing but a worm.

A lie is an excuse guarded

Then, rising with Aurora's light, The Muse invoked, sit down to write; Blot out, correct, insert, refine, Enlarge, diminish, interline.

Just get the right syllable in the proper place.

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

Books, the children of the brain.

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

When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.

Punning is an art of harmonious jingling upon words, which, passing in at the ears, excites a titillary motion in those parts; and this, being conveyed by the animal spirits into the muscles of the face, raises the cockles of the heart.

And surely one of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish had been left unsaid…

Complaint is the largest tribute heaven receives and the sincerest part of our devotion.

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.

Don't set your wit against a child.

Although the devil be the father of lies, he seems, like other great inventors, to have lost much of his reputation by the continual improvements that have been made upon him.

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

There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.

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

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.

Every dog must have his day.

The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.