Jonathan Swift Quotes
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Ah, a German and a genius! A prodigy, admit him!
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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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We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
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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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Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.
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Come, agree, the law's costly.
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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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A pleasant companion is as good as a coach.
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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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A maxim in law has more weight in the world than an article of faith.
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Seamen have a custom, when they meet a whale, to fling him out an empty tub by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the ship.
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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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Live every day as your last, because one of these days, it will be.
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Observation is an old man's memory.
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In church your grandsire cut his throat; to do the job too long he tarried: he should have had my hearty vote to cut his throat before he married.
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A favor is half granted, when graciously refused.
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Wisdom is a fox who, after long hunting, will at last cost you the pains to dig out; it is a cheese, which, by how much the richer, has the thicker, the homlier, and the coarser coat; and whereof to a judicious palate, the maggots are best. It is a sack posset, wherein the deeper you go, you'll find it the sweeter. Wisdom is a hen, whose cackling we must value and consider, because it is attended with an egg. But lastly, it is a nut, which, unless you choose with judgment, may cost you a tooth, and pay you with nothing but a worm.
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Your onions should be thoroughly boiled.
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It is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they are employed on as when they have lost their edge.
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A stander-by may sometimes, perhaps, see more of the game than he that plays it.
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He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
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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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Atlas, we read in ancient song, Was so exceeding tall and strong, He bore the skies upon his back, Just as the pedler does his pack; But, as the pedler overpress'd Unloads upon a stall to rest, Or, when he can no longer stand, Desires a friend to lend a hand, So Atlas, lest the ponderous spheres Should sink, and fall about his ears, Got Hercules to bear the pile, That he might sit and rest awhile.
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Conscience signifies that knowledge which a man hath of his own thoughts and actions; and because, if a man judgeth fairly of his actions by comparing them with the law of God, his mind will approve or condemn him; this knowledge or conscience may be both an accuser and a judge.