Jonathan Swift Quotes
-
By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty.
-
It often happens that, if a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done its work, and there is no further occasion for it.
-
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.
-
If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.
-
For in that universal call, Few bankers will to heaven be mounters; They'll cry, "Ye shops, upon us fall! Conceal and cover us, ye counters! When other hands the scales shall hold, And they, in men's and angels' sight Produced with all their bills and gold, 'Weigh'd in the balance and found light!'
-
Few are qualified to shine in company, but it is in most men's power to be agreeable.
-
"Lawyers Are": Those whose interests and abilities lie in perverting, confounding and eluding the law.
-
Whoe'er excels in what we prize, Appears a hero in our eyes; Each girl, when pleased with what is taught, Will have the teacher in her thought. . . . . A blockhead with melodious voice, In boarding-schools may have his choice.
-
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.
-
Men of wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.
-
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.
-
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
-
Argument is the worst sort of conversation.
-
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.
-
There is no quality so contrary to any nature which one cannot affect, and put on upon occasion, in order to serve an interest.
-
Let a man be never so wise, he may be caught with sober lies.
-
Flattery is the worst and falsest way of showing our esteem.
-
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.
-
The ruin of a State is generally preceded by an universal degeneracy of manners and contempt of religion.
-
Nothing more unqualified the man to act with prudence than a misfortune that is attended with shame and guilt.
-
The more careless, the more modish.
-
Nothing is so great an instance of ill-manners as flattery.
-
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.
-
Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.