Jonathan Swift Quotes
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Quotations are best brought in to confirm some opinion controverted.
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Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters.
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My hunger serves me instead of a clock.
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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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Philosophy! the lumber of the schools.
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Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
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I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and all my love is toward individuals: for instance, I hate the tribe of lawyers, but I love Counsellor Such-a-one, and Judge Such-a-one: so with physicians - I will not speak of my own trade - soldiers, English, Scotch, French, and the rest. But principally I hate and detest that animal called man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth. This is the system upon which I have governed myself many years, but do not tell.
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Blot out, correct, insert, refine, enlarge, diminish, interline. Be mindful, when invention fails. To scratch your head and bite your nails.
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Just get the right syllable in the proper place.
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A chuck under the chin is worth two kisses.
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Your notions of friendship are new to me; I believe every man is born with his quantum, and he cannot give to one without robbing another. I very well know to whom I would give the first place in my friendship, but they are not in the way, I am condemned to another scene, and therefore I distribute it in pennyworths to those about me, and who displease me least, and should do the same to my fellow prisoners if I were condemned to a jail.
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It is the first rule in oratory that a man must appear such as he would persuade others to be: and that can be accomplished only by the force of his life.
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Every age might perhaps produce one or two geniuses, if they were not sunk under the censure and obloquy of plodding, servile, imitating pedants.
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It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.
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I row after health like a waterman.
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Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe, how much it altered her person for the worse.
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Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
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The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word.
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Oh how our neighbour lifts his nose, To tell what every schoolboy knows.
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Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.
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But you think that it is time for me to have done with the world, and so I would if I could get into a better before I was called into the best, and not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.
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If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning etc., beginning from his youth, and so go to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last.
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In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.
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I love good creditable acquaintance; I love to be the worst of the company.