Jonathan Swift Quotes
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The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.
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A college joke to cure the dumps.
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Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.
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No wise man ever wished to be younger.
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All panegyrics are mingled with an infusion of poppy.
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I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.
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Satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any.
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An idle reason lessens the weight of the good ones you gave before.
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What poet would not grieve to see His brother write as well as he? But rather than they should excel, He'd wish his rivals all in Hell.
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Many a truth is told in jest.
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This is every cook's opinion - no savory dish without an onion, but lest your kissing should be spoiled your onions must be fully boiled.
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A true critic, in the perusal of a book, is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones.
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If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.
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Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters.
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An English tongue, if refined to a certain standard, might perhaps be fixed forever.
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What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.
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Physicians ought not to give their judgment of religion, for the same reason that butchers are not admitted to be jurors upon life and death.
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Then, rising with Aurora's light, The Muse invoked, sit down to write; Blot out, correct, insert, refine, Enlarge, diminish, interline.
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Walls have tongues, and hedges ears.
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One principal object of good-breeding is to suit our behaviour to the three several degrees of men, our superiors, our equals, and those below us.
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Dignity, high station, or great riches, are in some sort necessary to old men, in order to keep the younger at a distance, who are otherwise too apt to insult them upon the score of their age.
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There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.
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No man of honor, as the word is usually understood, did ever pretend that his honor obliged him to be chaste or temperate, to pay his creditors, to be useful to his country, to do good to mankind, to endeavor to be wise or learned, to regard his word, his promise, or his oath.
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I have known some men possessed of good qualities which were very serviceable to others, but useless to themselves; like a sun-dial on the front of a house, to inform the neighbours and passengers, but not the owner within.