Jonathan Swift Quotes
-
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.
-
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.
-
Philosophy! the lumber of the schools.
-
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.
-
In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.
-
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.
-
What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.
-
Although the devil be the father of lies, he seems, like other great inventors, to have lost much of his reputation by the continual improvements that have been made upon him.
-
Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
-
If you were not reasoned into your beliefs, you cannot be reasoned out of them.
-
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.
-
There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.
-
Oh how our neighbour lifts his nose, To tell what every schoolboy knows.
-
Every age might perhaps produce one or two geniuses, if they were not sunk under the censure and obloquy of plodding, servile, imitating pedants.
-
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.
-
Blot out, correct, insert, refine, enlarge, diminish, interline. Be mindful, when invention fails. To scratch your head and bite your nails.
-
So endless and exorbitant are the desires of men that they will grasp at all, and can form no scheme of perfect happiness with less.
-
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.
-
I love good creditable acquaintance; I love to be the worst of the company.
-
I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.
-
Such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up.
-
Silks, velvets, calicoes, and the whole lexicon of female fopperies.
-
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.
-
Bachelor's fare: bread and cheese, and kisses.