Jonathan Swift Quotes
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A favor is half granted, when graciously refused.
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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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It is a miserable thing to live in suspense; it is the life of the spider.
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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 maxim in law has more weight in the world than an article of faith.
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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.
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It is the talent of human nature to run from one extreme to another.
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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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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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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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Some dire misfortune to portend, no enemy can match a friend.
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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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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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We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
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You must take the will for the deed.
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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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Surely mortal man is a broomstick!
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When dunces are satiric, I take it for a panegyric.
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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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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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Though fear should lend him pinions like the wind, yet swifter fate will seize him from behind.