Jonathan Swift Quotes
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It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next. "Future ages shall talk of this; they shall be famous to all posterity;" whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now.
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Exploding many things under the name of trifles is a very false proof either of wisdom or magnanimity, and a great check to virtuous actions with regard to fame.
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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.
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Flattery is the worst and falsest way of showing our esteem.
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It is remarkable with what Christian fortitude and resignation we can bear the suffering of other folks.
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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.
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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.
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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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God hath intended our passions to prevail over reason.
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Ay, do despise me, I'm the prouder for it; I like to be despised.
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Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.
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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.
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Punning is a talent which no man affects to despise but he that is without it.
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Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.
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Every dog must have his day.
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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.
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For though, in nature, depth and height Are equally held infinite: In poetry, the height we know; 'Tis only infinite below.
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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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Judges... are picked out from the most dextrous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy, and having been biased all their lives against truth or equity, are under such a fatal necessity of favoring fraud, perjury and oppression, that I have known several of them to refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty by doing any thing unbecoming their nature in office.
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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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There is no quality so contrary to any nature which one cannot affect, and put on upon occasion, in order to serve an interest.
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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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I forget whether advice be among the lost things which Ariosto says are to be found in the moon: that and time ought to have been there.
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Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.