Jonathan Swift Quotes
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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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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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Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.
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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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Patience alleviates, as impatience augments, pain; thus persons of strong will suffer less than those who give way to irritation.
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Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.
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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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Nothing is so great an instance of ill-manners as flattery.
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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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Lord, Madame, I have fed like a farmer; I shall grow as fat as a porpoise.
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It is not so much the being exempt from faults as the having overcome them that is an advantage to us; it being with the follies of the mind as with weeds of a field, which if destroyed and consumed upon the place where they grow, enrich and improve it more than if none had ever sprung there.
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A forward critic often dupes us With sham quotations peri hupsos, And if we have not read Longinus, Will magisterially outshine us. Then, lest with Greek he over-run ye, Procure the book for love or money, Translated from Boileau's translation, And quote quotation on quotation.
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Hail, follow, well met, All dirty and wet: Find out, if you can, Who's master, who's man.
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There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
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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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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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Let a man be ne'er so wise, he may be caught with sober 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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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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Though fear should lend him pinions like the wind, yet swifter fate will seize him from behind.
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Don't set your wit against a child.
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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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From not the gravest of Divines, Accept for once some serious Lines.