Jonathan Swift Quotes
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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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Your onions should be thoroughly boiled.
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The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
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If they would, for Example, praise the Beauty of a Woman, or any other Animal, they describe it by Rhombs, Circles, Parallelograms, Ellipses, and other geometrical terms.
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A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.
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When dunces are satiric, I take it for a panegyric.
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This made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavor to do himself honor among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him.
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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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I will venture to affirm, that the three seasons wherein our corn has miscarried did no more contribute to our present misery, than one spoonful of water thrown upon a rat already drowned would contribute to his death; and that the present plentiful harvest, although it should be followed by a dozen ensuing, would no more restore us, than it would the rat aforesaid to put him near the fire, which might indeed warm his fur-coat, but never bring him back to life.
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A footman may swear; but he cannot swear like a lord. He can swear as often: but can he swear with equal delicacy, propriety, and judgment?
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The various opinions of philosophers have scattered through the world as many plagues of the mind as Pandora's box did those of the body; only with this difference, that they have not left hope at the bottom.
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This wine should be eaten, it is too good to be drunk.
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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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Surely mortal man is a broomstick!
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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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Physicians ought not to give their judgment of religion, for the same reason that butchers are not admitted to be jurors upon life and death.
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And surely one of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish had been left unsaid.
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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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Conversation is but carving! Give no more to every guest Than he's able to digest.
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Live every day as your last, because one of these days, it will be.
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Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
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There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
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It is computed that eleven thousand persons have at several times suffered death rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end.
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When we are old, our friends find it difficult to please us, and are less concerned whether we be pleased or not.