Jonathan Swift Quotes
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They have likewise discovered two lesser stars, or satellites, which revolve around Mars, whereof the innermost is distant from the center of the primary exactly three of his diameters, and the outermost five: the former revolves in the space of ten hours, and the latter in twenty-one and a half, so that the squares of their periodical times are very near in the same proportion with the cubes of their distances from the center of Mars; which evidently shows them to be governed by the same Law of Gravitation that influences the other heavenly bodies.
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I love good creditable acquaintance; I love to be the worst of the company.
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There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.
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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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He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers.
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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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Usually speaking, the worst-bred person in company is a young traveller just returned from abroad.
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Whence proceeds this weight we lay On what detracting people say? Their utmost malice cannot make Your head, or tooth, or finger ache; Nor spoil your shapes, distort your face, Or put one feature out of place.
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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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Some dire misfortune to portend, no enemy can match a friend.
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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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I row after health like a waterman.
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Such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up.
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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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With a whirl of thought oppressed I sink from reverie to rest. An horrid vision seized my head, I saw the graves give up their dead.
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Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
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It is the talent of human nature to run from one extreme to another.
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Oh how our neighbour lifts his nose, To tell what every schoolboy knows.
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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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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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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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Men always grow vicious before they become unbelievers.
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Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
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In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.