Jonathan Swift Quotes
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My hunger serves me instead of a clock.
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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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A chuck under the chin is worth two kisses.
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Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
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Philosophy! the lumber of the schools.
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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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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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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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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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It is likewise to be observed that this society hath a peculiar chant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply.
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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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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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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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I row after health like a waterman.
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Just get the right syllable in the proper place.
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Quotations are best brought in to confirm some opinion controverted.
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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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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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Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
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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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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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Strange an astrologer should die, without one wonder in the sky.