Jonathan Swift Quotes
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Brisk talkers are usually slow thinkers. There is, indeed, no wild beast more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate. If you are civil to the voluble they will abuse your patience; if brusque, your character.
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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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Ale is meat, drink and cloth; it will make a cat speak and a wise man dumb.
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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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Philosophy! the lumber of the schools.
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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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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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A Child will make two Dishes at an Entertainment for Friends; and when the Family dines alone, the fore or hind Quarter will makea reasonable Dish; and seasoned with a little Pepper or Salt, will be very good Boiled on the fourth Day, especially in Winter.
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I never knew any man cured of inattention.
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In all assemblies, though you wedge them ever so close, we may observe this peculiar property, that over their heads there is room enough; but how to reach it is the difficult point. To this end the philosopher's way in all ages has been by erecting certain edifices in the air.
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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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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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Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
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Bachelor's fare: bread and cheese, and kisses.
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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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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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Oh how our neighbour lifts his nose, To tell what every schoolboy knows.
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If you were not reasoned into your beliefs, you cannot be reasoned out of them.
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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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It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.
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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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I love good creditable acquaintance; I love to be the worst of the company.
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It is the talent of human nature to run from one extreme to another.
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I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.