Jonathan Swift Quotes

There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.

Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.

Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody‘s face but their own.

A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.

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.

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

The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.

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

What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.

Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.

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.

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.

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

When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.

May you live all the days of your life.

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

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.

The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.

Every dog must have his day.

If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.

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

Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.

Every dog must have his day.

Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.

Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.

The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.

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

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.

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.

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.

The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.

A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.

Observation is an old man‘s memory.

No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.

The want of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.

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.

Books, the children of the brain.

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.

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.

Observation is an old man‘s memory.

He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.

Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.

I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.

The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.

Don’t set your wit against a child.

It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.

We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.

The latter part of a wise person’s life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.

We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.

Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.

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.

Books, the children of the brain.

The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.

A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.

Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.

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.

Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.