Jonathan Swift Quotes
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Religion supposed Heaven and Hell, the word of God, and sacraments, and twenty other circumstances which, taken seriously, are a wonderful check to wit and humour.
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Let a man be never so wise, he may be caught with sober lies.
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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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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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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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It is remarkable with what Christian fortitude and resignation we can bear the suffering of other folks.
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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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Faith, that's as well said as if I had said it myself.
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T is as cheap sitting as standing.
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Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
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Abstracts, abridgments, summaries, etc., have the same use with burning-glasses,--to collect the diffused light rays of wit and learning in authors, and make them point with warmth and quickness upon the reader's imagination.
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Do you think I was born in a wood to be afraid of an owl?
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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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My father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the Third of five Sons.
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Neither are any wars so furious and bloody, or of so long continuance as those occasioned by difference in opinion, especially if it be in things indifferent.
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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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Every day is an opportunity to make a new happy ending. May you live all the days of your life.
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This Day, whate'er the Fates decree; Shall still be kept with Joy by me: This Day then, let us not be told, That you are sick, and I grown old
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There are but three ways for a man to revenge himself of the censure of the world,--to despise it, to return the like, or to endeavor to live so as to avoid it; the first of these is usually pretended, the last is almost impossible, the universal practice is for the second.
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I have heard of a man who had a mind to sell his house, and therefore carried a piece of brick in his pocket, which he shewed as a pattern to encourage purchasers.
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In all distresses of our friends We first consult our private ends; While Nature, kindly bent to ease us, Points out some circumstance to please us.
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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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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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The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.