Jonathan Swift Quotes
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Perverseness is your whole defence.
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By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty.
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Modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
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It is very unfair in any writer to employ ignorance and malice together, because it gives his answerer double work.
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Do you think I was born in a wood to be afraid of an owl?
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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.
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Every dog must have his day.
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Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
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This single Stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected Corner, I once knew in a flourishing State in a Forest: It was full of Sap, full of Leaves, and full of Boughs: But now, in vain does the busy Art of Man pretend to vie with Nature, by tying that withered Bundle of Twigs to its sapless Trunk: It is at best but the Reverse of what it was; a Tree turned upside down, the Branches on the Earth, and the Root in the Air.
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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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She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork.
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When a real genius appeares in this world, you'll know him by the fact that all the fools have allied against him.
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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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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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Rebukes are easy from our betters, From men of quality and letters; But when low dunces will affront, What man alive can stand the brunt?
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Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired.
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To acknowledge you were wrong yesterday is simply to let the world know that you are wiser today than you were then.
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Under the rose, since here are none but friends, To own the truth we have some private ends.
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Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible.
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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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I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
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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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There's none so blind as they that won't see.
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Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.