Jonathan Swift Quotes
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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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Perverseness is your whole defence.
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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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Nothing more unqualified the man to act with prudence than a misfortune that is attended with shame and guilt.
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Do you think I was born in a wood to be afraid of an owl?
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Modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
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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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Punning is a talent which no man affects to despise but he that is without it.
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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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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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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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Under the rose, since here are none but friends, To own the truth we have some private ends.
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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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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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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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It is remarkable with what Christian fortitude and resignation we can bear the suffering of other folks.
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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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Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired.
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She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork.
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Tis happy for him that his Father was born before him.
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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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Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.
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T is as cheap sitting as standing.