Jonathan Swift Quotations | Page 3

I have always a sacred veneration for anyone I observe to be a little out of repair in his person, as supposing him either a poet or a philosopher.

A Child will make two Dishes at an Entertainment for Friends; and when the Family dines alone, the fore or hind Quarter will makea reasonable Dish; and seasoned with a little Pepper or Salt, will be very good Boiled on the fourth Day, especially in Winter.

Philosophy! the lumber of the schools.

The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.

The two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.

By the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your country you are and ought to be as free a people as your brethren in England.

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

The worthiest people are the most injured by slander, as is the best fruit which the birds have been pecking at.

The greatest Inventions were produced in Times of Ignorance; as the Use of the Compass, Gunpowder, and Printing; and by the dullest Nation, as the Germans.

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.

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

Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone.

Neither are any wars so furious and bloody, or of so long continuance as those occasioned by difference in opinion, especially if it be in things indifferent.

In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.

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.

Rhetoric in serious discourses is like the flowers in corn; pleasing to those who come only for amusement, but prejudicial to him who would reap profit from it.

Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them; as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like a face on the wall or the wainscot can, by two or three touches with a lead pencil, make it look visible, and agreeing with what he fancied.

Silks, velvets, calicoes, and the whole lexicon of female fopperies.

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.

Though fear should lend him pinions like the wind, yet swifter fate will seize him from behind.

It is not so much the being exempt from faults as the having overcome them that is an advantage to us; it being with the follies of the mind as with weeds of a field, which if destroyed and consumed upon the place where they grow, enrich and improve it more than if none had ever sprung there.

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.

I am convinced that if the virtuosi could once find out a world in the moon, with a passage to it, our women would wear nothing but what directly came from thence.

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.

Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age.

What religion is he of? Why, he is an Anythingarian.

Flattery is the worst and falsest way of showing our esteem.

My father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the Third of five Sons.

A true critic, in the perusal of a book, is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones.

If you were not reasoned into your beliefs, you cannot be reasoned out of them.

A college joke to cure the dumps.

Conversation is but carving! Give no more to every guest Than he's able to digest.

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.

A pleasant companion is as good as a coach.

Modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.

Atlas, we read in ancient song, Was so exceeding tall and strong, He bore the skies upon his back, Just as the pedler does his pack; But, as the pedler overpress'd Unloads upon a stall to rest, Or, when he can no longer stand, Desires a friend to lend a hand, So Atlas, lest the ponderous spheres Should sink, and fall about his ears, Got Hercules to bear the pile, That he might sit and rest awhile.

It is very unfair in any writer to employ ignorance and malice together, because it gives his answerer double work.

Tell truth, and shame the devil.

Possession, they say, is eleven points of the law.

Surely mortal man is a broomstick!

Brutes find out where their talents lie; a bear will not attempt to fly.

You must take the will for the deed.

Hobbes clearly proves, that every creature Lives in a state of war by nature.

When dunces are satiric, I take it for a panegyric.

Walls have tongues, and hedges ears.

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

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.

I would rather be a freeman among slaves than a slave among freemen.

A jargon form'd from the lost language, wit, Confounded in that Babel of the pit; Form'd by diseased conceptions, weak and wild, Sick lust of souls, and an abortive child; Born between whores and fops, by lewd compacts, Before the play, or else between the acts; Nor wonder, if from such polluted minds Should spring such short and transitory kinds.

Tis nothing when you are used to it.

Not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.

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

Unjustly poets we asperse: Truth shines the brighter clad in verse, And all the fictions they pursue Do but insinuate what is true.

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.

In all assemblies, though you wedge them ever so close, we may observe this peculiar property, that over their heads there is room enough; but how to reach it is the difficult point. To this end the philosopher's way in all ages has been by erecting certain edifices in the air.

The affectation of some late authors to introduce and multiply cant words is the most ruinous corruption in any language.

The translators of the Bible were masters of an English style much fitter for that work than any we see in our present writings; the which is owing to the simplicity that runs through the whole.

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

Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation td posterity? Let him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments.

I never knew any man cured of inattention.

Strange an astrologer should die, without one wonder in the sky.

Quotations are best brought in to confirm some opinion controverted.

I'll give you leave to call me anything, if you don't call me spade.

Abstracts, abridgments, summaries, etc., have the same use with burning-glasses,--to collect the diffused light rays of wit and learning in authors, and make them point with warmth and quickness upon the reader's imagination.

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.

Hail fellow, well met.

I'm up and down and round about, Yet all the world can't find me out; Though hundreds have employed their leisure, They never yet could find my measure.

Say, Britain, could you ever boast, Three poets in an age at most? Our chilling climate hardly bears A sprig of bays in fifty years.

I am of the level with common Astrologers; who, with an old paltry cant, and a few pot-hooks for planets to amuse the vulgar, have too long been suffered to abuse the world.

What poet would not grieve to see His brother write as well as he? But rather than they should excel, He'd wish his rivals all in Hell.

Every day is an opportunity to make a new happy ending. May you live all the days of your life.

I can discover no political evil in suffering bullies, sharpers, and rakes, to rid the world of each other by a method of their own; where the law hath not been able to find an expedient.

Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions, and consequently of no use to a good king or a good ministry; for which reason Courts are so overrun with politics.

Daphne knows, with equal ease, How to vex and how to please; But the folly of her sex Makes her sole delight to vex.

Lose no time to contradict her, Nor endeavor to convict her; Only take this rule along, Always to advise her wrong, And reprove her when she's right; She may then grow wise for spite.

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.

You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

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.

Kitchen Physic is the best Physic.

Apollo was held the god of physic and sender of disease. Both were originally the same trade, and still continue.

Come hither, all ye empty things, Ye bubbles rais'd by breath of Kings; Who float upon the tide of state, Come hither, and behold your fate. Let pride be taught by this rebuke, How very mean a thing's a Duke; From all his ill-got honours flung, Turn'd to that dirt from whence he sprung.

With a whirl of thought oppressed I sink from reverie to rest. An horrid vision seized my head, I saw the graves give up their dead.

This Day, whate'er the Fates decree; Shall still be kept with Joy by me: This Day then, let us not be told, That you are sick, and I grown old

Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs, Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.

Vain men delight in telling what Honours have been done them, what great Company they have kept, and the like; by which they plainly confess, that these Honours were more than their Due, and such as their Friends would not believe if they had not been told: Whereas a Man truly proud, thinks the greatest Honours below his Merit, and consequently scorns to boast. I therefore deliver it as a Maxim that whoever desires the Character of a proud Man, ought to conceal his Vanity.

And, is not Virtue in Mankind The Nutriment that feeds the Mind?

Careful observers may foretell the hour (By sure prognostics) when to dread a show'r. While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more.

Sweeping from butcher's stalls, dung, guts, and blood, Drown'd puppies, stinking sprats, all drench'd in mud, Dead cats, and turnip-tops, come tumbling down the flood.

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

My Lawyer being practiced almost from his Cradle in defending Falsehood; is quite out of his Element when he would be an Advocate for Justice, which as an Office unnatural, he always attempts with great Awkwardness if not with Ill-will.

Vision is seeing the invisible.

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

When a real genius appeares in this world, you'll know him by the fact that all the fools have allied against him.

An intelligent person should put money in the beginning, but not in heart

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

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.

Physicians ought not to give their judgment of religion, for the same reason that butchers are not admitted to be jurors upon life and death.

To acknowledge you were wrong yesterday is simply to let the world know that you are wiser today than you were then.