Jonathan Swift Quotes

Proper words in proper places make the true definition of a style.
Jonathan Swift
There was all the world and his wife.
Jonathan Swift
Most sorts of diversion in men children and other animals are in imitation of fighting.
Jonathan Swift
The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
Jonathan Swift
When men grow virtuous in their old age they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.
Jonathan Swift
Usually speaking the worst-bred person in company is a young traveller just returned from abroad.
Jonathan Swift
May you live all the days of your life.
Jonathan Swift
Very few men properly speaking live at present but are providing to live another time.
Jonathan Swift
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.
Jonathan Swift
What some invent the rest enlarge.
Jonathan Swift
Brutes find out where their talents lie a bear will not attempt to fly.
Jonathan Swift
Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
Jonathan Swift
When I am reading a book whether wise or silly it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.
Jonathan Swift
I know Sir John will go though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs.
Jonathan Swift
Promise and pie-crust are made to be broken.
Jonathan Swift
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 by water.
Jonathan Swift
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.
Jonathan Swift
Possession they say is eleven points of the law.
Jonathan Swift
He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
Jonathan Swift
Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
Jonathan Swift
When I am reading a book whether wise or silly it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.
Jonathan Swift
I know Sir John will go though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs.
Jonathan Swift
Promise and pie-crust are made to be broken.
Jonathan Swift
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 by water.
Jonathan Swift
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.
Jonathan Swift
Possession they say is eleven points of the law.
Jonathan Swift
He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
Jonathan Swift
May you live all the days of your life.
Jonathan Swift
Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy is the best bred in the company.
Jonathan Swift
May you live all the days of your life.
Jonathan Swift
When the world has once begun to use us ill and afterwards continues the same treatment with less scruple or ceremony as men do to a whore.
Jonathan Swift
Lord! I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
Jonathan Swift
Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.
Jonathan Swift
What some invent the rest enlarge.
Jonathan Swift
I heard the little bird say so.
Jonathan Swift
When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
Jonathan Swift
111 company is like a dog who dirts those most whom he loves best.
Jonathan Swift
They say fingers were made before forks and hands before knives.
Jonathan Swift
Bread is the staff of life.
Jonathan Swift
Every dog must have his day.
Jonathan Swift
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.
Jonathan Swift
There is nothing in this world constant but inconstancy.
Jonathan Swift
An excuse is a lie guarded.
Jonathan Swift
He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
Jonathan Swift
Complaint is the largest tribute Heaven receives.
Jonathan Swift
We are so fond of each other because our ailments are the same.
Jonathan Swift
She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on her with a pitchfork.
Jonathan Swift
The first springs of great events like those of great rivers are often mean and little.
Jonathan Swift
I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.
Jonathan Swift
There's none so blind as they that won't see.
Jonathan Swift
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.
Jonathan Swift
She looks as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.
Jonathan Swift
No wise man ever wished to be younger.
Jonathan Swift
Zsa Zsa Gabor when asked which of the Gabor women was the oldest said "She'll never admit it but I believe it is Mama." When men grow virtuous in their old age they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.
Jonathan Swift
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.
Jonathan Swift
When the world has once begun to use us ill it afterwards continues the same treatment with less scruple or ceremony as men do to a whore.
Jonathan Swift
He put this engine [a silver pocket watch] into our ears, which made an incessant noise, like that of a water-mill: and we conjecture it is either some unknown animal, or the god that he worships; but we are more inclined to the latter opinion, because he assured us, (if we understood him right, for he expressed himself very imperfectly) that he seldom did any thing without consulting it. He called it his oracle, and said, it pointed out the time for every action of his life.
Jonathan Swift
These reasonings will furnish us with an adequate definition of a true critic: that he is a discoverer and collector of writers’ faults. Which may be farther put beyond dispute by the following demonstration: that whoever will examine the writings in all kinds, wherewith this ancient sect has honoured the world, shall immediately find, from the whole thread and tenor of them, that the ideas of the authors have been altogether conversant and taken up with the faults and blemishes, and oversights, and mistakes of other writers; and let the subject treated on be whatever it will, their imaginations are so entirely possessed and replete with the defects of other pens, that the very quintessence of what is bad does of necessity distil into their own, by which means the whole appears to be nothing else but an abstract of the criticisms themselves have made.
Jonathan Swift
For this kind of commodity will not bear exportation, the flesh being of too tender a consistence to admit a long continuance in salt, although perhaps I could name a country which would be glad to eat up our whole nation without it.
Jonathan Swift
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.
Jonathan Swift