Jonathan Swift Quotes
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Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
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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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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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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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It is very unfair in any writer to employ ignorance and malice together, because it gives his answerer double work.
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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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Modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
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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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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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Perverseness is your whole defence.
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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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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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Do you think I was born in a wood to be afraid of an owl?
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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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She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork.
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There's none so blind as they that won't see.
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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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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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Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible.
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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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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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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.