Jonathan Swift Quotes
-
We have an intuitive sense of our duty.
-
Let a man be never so wise, he may be caught with sober lies.
-
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!'
-
An atheist has got one point beyond the devil.
-
The various opinions of philosophers have scattered through the world as many plagues of the mind as Pandora's box did those of the body; only with this difference, that they have not left hope at the bottom.
-
When we are old, our friends find it difficult to please us, and are less concerned whether we be pleased or not.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
-
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.
-
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.
-
War: that mad game the world so loves to play.
-
The ruin of a State is generally preceded by an universal degeneracy of manners and contempt of religion.
-
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.
-
Every day is an opportunity to make a new happy ending. May you live all the days of your life.
-
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.
-
Ever eating, never cloying, All-devouring, all-destroying Never finding full repast, Till I eat the world at last.
-
A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
-
Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.
-
The more careless, the more modish.
-
Punning is a talent which no man affects to despise but he that is without it.
-
Have you not observed that there is a lower kind of discretion and regularity, which seldom fails of raising men to the highest station in the court, the church, and the law?
-
All Pretences of foretelling by Astrology, are Deceits; for this manifest Reason, because the Wise and Learned, who can only judge whether there be any Truth in this Science, do all unanimously agree to laugh at and despise it; and none but the poor ignorant Vulgar give it any Credit.