Jonathan Swift Quotes
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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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"Lawyers Are": Those whose interests and abilities lie in perverting, confounding and eluding the law.
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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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Every day is an opportunity to make a new happy ending. May you live all the days of your life.
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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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When a man of genius appears in the world, it is immediately recognized by the fact that all the blockheads join forces against him.
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Nothing more unqualified the man to act with prudence than a misfortune that is attended with shame and guilt.
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What religion is he of? Why, he is an Anythingarian.
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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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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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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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Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
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We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
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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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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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God hath intended our passions to prevail over reason.
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Punning is a talent which no man affects to despise but he that is without it.
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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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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.
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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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Ay, do despise me, I'm the prouder for it; I like to be despised.
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If a lump of soot falls into the soup and you cannot conveniently get it out, stir it well in and it will give the soup a French taste.
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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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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.