Jonathan Swift Quotations | Page 5

Judges... are picked out from the most dextrous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy, and having been biased all their lives against truth or equity, are under such a fatal necessity of favoring fraud, perjury and oppression, that I have known several of them to refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty by doing any thing unbecoming their nature in office.

Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.

That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.

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

I remember it was with extreme difficulty that I could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word opinion, or how a point could be disputable; because reason taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain; and beyond our knowledge we cannot do either.

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.

Undoubtedly, philosophers are in the right when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.

Bachelor's fare: bread and cheese, and kisses.

If we take an examination of what is understood by happiness ... we shall find all its properties ... under this short definition, that it is a perpetual possession of being well deceived.

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.

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.

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.

I love white Portugal wine better than claret, champagne, or burgundy. I have a sad vulgar appetite.

A fig for partridges and quails, ye dainties I know nothing of ye; But on the highest mount in Wales Would choose in peace to drink my coffee.

The best Maxim I know in this life is, to drink your Coffee when you can, and when you cannot, to be easy without it.

A carpenter is known by his chips.

hoever 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.

For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labor, and search, and ranging through every corner of nature; the difference is that instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.

Everybody wants to live forever, but nobody wants to grow old.

Party is the madness of many for the gain of a few.

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.

In all I wish, how happy should I be, Thou grand Deluder, were it not for thee? So weak thou art that fools thy power despise; And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise.

All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain and languor; it's like spending this year part of next year's revenue.

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

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

I love good creditable acquaintance; I love to be the worst of the company.

It is in disputes as in armies, where the weaker side sets up false lights, and makes a great noise, to make the enemy believe them more numerous and strong than they really are.

A secret is seldom safe in more than one breast.

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?

If the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots I would burn my [Gulliver's] Travels.

For, what though his Head be empty, provided his Common place-Book be full...

So geographers, in Africa maps, With savage pictures fill their gaps, And o'er uninhabitable downs Place elephants for want of towns

Usually speaking, the worst-bred person in company is a young traveller just returned from abroad.

In all distresses of our friends We first consult our private ends; While Nature, kindly bent to ease us, Points out some circumstance to please us.

Do you think I was born in a wood to be afraid of an owl?

I always love to begin a journey on Sundays, because I shall have the prayers of the church to preserve all that travel by land, or water.

I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world.

I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.

Pedantry is properly the over-rating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to.

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.

There is no vice which humankind carries to such wild extremes as that of avarice.

Time is painted with a lock before, and bald behind, signifying thereby that we must take time by the forelock; for, when it is once past, there is no recalling it.

Nor do they trust their tongue alone, but speak a language of their own; can read a nod, a shrug, a look, far better than a printed book; convey a libel in a frown, and wink a reputation down.

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?

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

An excuse is a lie guarded.

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

For though, in nature, depth and height Are equally held infinite: In poetry, the height we know; 'Tis only infinite below.

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.

Life is a tragedy wherein we sit as spectators for a while and then act our part in it.

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

A stander-by may sometimes, perhaps, see more of the game than he that plays it.

All panegyrics are mingled with an infusion of poppy.

They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.

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

They have likewise discovered two lesser stars, or satellites, which revolve around Mars, whereof the innermost is distant from the center of the primary exactly three of his diameters, and the outermost five: the former revolves in the space of ten hours, and the latter in twenty-one and a half, so that the squares of their periodical times are very near in the same proportion with the cubes of their distances from the center of Mars; which evidently shews them to be governed by the same Law of Gravitation that influences the other heavenly bodies.

I shall be like that tree-I shall die at the top.

Lord, Madame, I have fed like a farmer; I shall grow as fat as a porpoise.

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.

I hope you will be ready to own publicly, whenever you shall be called to it, that by your great and frequent urgency you prevailed on me to publish a very loose and uncorrect account of my travels, with directions to hire some young gentleman of either university to put them in order, and correct the style, as my cousin Dampier did, by my advice, in his book called "A Voyage round the world."

Come, agree, the law's costly.

Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.

There is no quality so contrary to any nature which one cannot affect, and put on upon occasion, in order to serve an interest.

In church your grandsire cut his throat; to do the job too long he tarried: he should have had my hearty vote to cut his throat before he married.

This is every cook's opinion - no savory dish without an onion, but lest your kissing should be spoiled your onions must be fully boiled.

By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty.

"Lawyers Are": Those whose interests and abilities lie in perverting, confounding and eluding the law.

It is computed that eleven thousand persons have at several times suffered death rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end.

The sight of you is good for sore eyes.

Blot out, correct, insert, refine, enlarge, diminish, interline. Be mindful, when invention fails. To scratch your head and bite your nails.

The more careless, the more modish.

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

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

Under the rose, since here are none but friends, To own the truth we have some private ends.

When I am in danger of bursting, I will go and whisper among the reeds.

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.

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

Happiness is a perpetual possession of being well deceived.

The latter part of a man's life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former.