Jonathan Swift Quotes
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Polite Conversation Why, everyone one as they like; as the good woman said when she kissed her cow.
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Argument is the worst sort of conversation.
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A pleasant companion is as good as a coach.
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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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It is the talent of human nature to run from one extreme to another.
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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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Some dire misfortune to portend, no enemy can match a friend.
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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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He that calls a man ungrateful sums up all the veil that a man can be guilty of.
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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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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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We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
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A maxim in law has more weight in the world than an article of faith.
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Vain men delight in telling what Honours have been done them, what great Company they have kept, and the like; by which they plainly confess, that these Honours were more than their Due, and such as their Friends would not believe if they had not been told: Whereas a Man truly proud, thinks the greatest Honours below his Merit, and consequently scorns to boast. I therefore deliver it as a Maxim that whoever desires the Character of a proud Man, ought to conceal his Vanity.
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The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
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Love why do we one passion call, When 'tis a compound of them all? Where hot and cold, where sharp and sweet, In all their equipages meet; Where pleasures mix'd with pains appear, Sorrow with joy, and hope with fear.
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A stander-by may sometimes, perhaps, see more of the game than he that plays it.
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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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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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There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them.
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Your onions should be thoroughly boiled.
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There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
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It is a miserable thing to live in suspense; it is the life of the spider.
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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.