Jonathan Swift Quotes
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Let a man be never so wise, he may be caught with sober lies.
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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.
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My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
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It is computed that eleven thousand persons have at several times suffered death rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end.
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An atheist has got one point beyond the devil.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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We have an intuitive sense of our duty.
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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.
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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!'
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Every day is an opportunity to make a new happy ending. May you live all the days of your life.
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When we are old, our friends find it difficult to please us, and are less concerned whether we be pleased or not.
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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.
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Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.
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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?
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Punning is a talent which no man affects to despise but he that is without it.
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War: that mad game the world so loves to play.
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Ever eating, never cloying, All-devouring, all-destroying Never finding full repast, Till I eat the world at last.
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My father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the Third of five Sons.
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A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
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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.
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The ruin of a State is generally preceded by an universal degeneracy of manners and contempt of religion.
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When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.