Jonathan Swift Quotes
-
Some men, under the notion of weeding out prejudice, eradicate virtue, honesty and religion.
-
If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.
-
"Lawyers Are": Those whose interests and abilities lie in perverting, confounding and eluding the law.
-
I have now lost my barrier between me and death; God grant I may live to be as well prepared for it, as I confidently believe her to have been! If the way to Heaven be through piety, truth, justice and charity, she is there.
-
Flattery is the worst and falsest way of showing our esteem.
-
Perverseness is your whole defence.
-
What religion is he of? Why, he is an Anythingarian.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
-
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.
-
Kitchen Physic is the best Physic.
-
God hath intended our passions to prevail over reason.
-
How often do we contradict the right rules of reason in the whole course of our lives! Reason itself is true and just, but the reason of every particular man is weak and wavering, perpetually swayed and turned by his interests, his passions, and his vices.
-
Nothing more unqualified the man to act with prudence than a misfortune that is attended with shame and guilt.
-
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.
-
Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.
-
We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
-
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.
-
Modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
-
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 who possess all the advantages of life are in a state where there are many accidents to disorder and discompose, but few to please them.
-
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.
-
Punning is a talent which no man affects to despise but he that is without it.