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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Pray steal me not, I'm Mrs. Dingley's, Whose heart in this four-footed thing lies.
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Arbitrary power is the natural object of temptation to a prince, as wine and women to a young fellow, or a bribe to a judge, or avarice to old age.
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A favor is half granted, when graciously refused.
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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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He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
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A maxim in law has more weight in the world than an article of faith.
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What some people invent the rest enlarge.
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Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.
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Don't set your wit against a child.
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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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It is as hard to satirize well a man of distinguished vices, as to praise well a man of distinguished virtues.
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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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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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Ah, a German and a genius! A prodigy, admit him!
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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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Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.
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In all I wish, how happy should I be, Thou grand Deluder, were it not for thee? So weak thou art that fools thy power despise; And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise.
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It may pass for a maxim in State, that the administration cannot be placed in too few hands, nor the legislature in too many.
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What vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me, although I am not so old in proportion to them as I formerly was: which I can prove by arithmetic, for then I was double their age, which now I am not. Letter to Alexander Pope. 7 Feb. 1736.
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Religion seems to have grown an infant with age, and requires miracles to nurse it, as it had in its infancy.
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Undoubtedly, philosophers are in the right when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.
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You must take the will for the deed.
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"Lawyers Are": Those whose interests and abilities lie in perverting, confounding and eluding the law.