Jonathan Swift Quotes
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Argument is the worst sort of conversation.
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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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From not the gravest of Divines, Accept for once some serious Lines.
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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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Such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up.
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So, naturalists observe, a flea; Hath smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum.
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Your onions should be thoroughly boiled.
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Complaint is the largest tribute heaven receives and the sincerest part of our devotion.
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... the atheists, libertines, despisers of religion ... that is to say all those who usually pass under the name of Free-thinkers.
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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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Polite Conversation Why, everyone one as they like; as the good woman said when she kissed her cow.
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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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When dunces are satiric, I take it for a panegyric.
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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 is the talent of human nature to run from one extreme to another.
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She watches him as a cat would watch a mouse.
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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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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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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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Hail, follow, well met, All dirty and wet: Find out, if you can, Who's master, who's man.
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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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Some dire misfortune to portend, no enemy can match a friend.
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A stander-by may sometimes, perhaps, see more of the game than he that plays it.
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There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.