Jonathan Swift Quotes
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When a man is made a spiritual peer he loses his surname; when a temporal, his Christian name.
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Silks, velvets, calicoes, and the whole lexicon of female fopperies.
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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.
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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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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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If you were not reasoned into your beliefs, you cannot be reasoned out of them.
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So, naturalists observe, a flea; Hath smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum.
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Ah, a German and a genius! A prodigy, admit him!
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If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.
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Hobbes clearly proves, that every creature Lives in a state of war by nature.
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A pleasant companion is as good as a coach.
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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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Punning is an art of harmonious jingling upon words, which, passing in at the ears, excites a titillary motion in those parts; and this, being conveyed by the animal spirits into the muscles of the face, raises the cockles of the heart.
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Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.
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Possession, they say, is eleven points of the law.
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If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.
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Bachelor's fare: bread and cheese, and kisses.
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For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labor, and search, and ranging through every corner of nature; the difference is that instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
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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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Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.
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The tiny Lilliputians surmise that Gulliver's watch may be his god, because it is that which, he admits, he seldom does anything without consulting.
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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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He that calls a man ungrateful sums up all the veil that a man can be guilty of.
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It is a miserable thing to live in suspense; it is the life of the spider.