Jonathan Swift Quotes
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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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Usually speaking, the worst-bred person in company is a young traveller just returned from abroad.
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This wine should be eaten, it is too good to be drunk.
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There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof, I hope, there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am not understood, it shall be concluded, that something very useful and profound is couched underneath; and again, that whatever word or sentence is printed in a different character, shall be judged to contain something extraordinary either or wit of sublime.
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Silks, velvets, calicoes, and the whole lexicon of female fopperies.
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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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A maxim in law has more weight in the world than an article of faith.
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It is the talent of human nature to run from one extreme to another.
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It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.
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Hobbes clearly proves, that every creature Lives in a state of war by nature.
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Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
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Some dire misfortune to portend, no enemy can match a friend.
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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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Ah, a German and a genius! A prodigy, admit him!
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Praise is the daughter of present power.
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It is a miserable thing to live in suspense; it is the life of the spider.
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If it were a rainy day, a drunken vigil, a fit of the spleen, a course of physic, sleepy Sunday, an ill run at dice, a long tailor's bill, a beggar's purse, a factious head, a hot sun, costive diet, want of books, and a just contempt for learning - but for these. . .the number of authors and of writing would dwindle away to a degree most woeful to behold.
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He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
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A traveler's chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad-as well as good example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.
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... the atheists, libertines, despisers of religion ... that is to say all those who usually pass under the name of Free-thinkers.
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A fig for partridges and quails, ye dainties I know nothing of ye; But on the highest mount in Wales Would choose in peace to drink my coffee.
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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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The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter and a scarcity of words; for whosoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt, in speaking, to hesitate upon the choice of both.
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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.