Jonathan Swift Quotes
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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.
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Surely mortal man is a broomstick!
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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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She watches him as a cat would watch a mouse.
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There seems to be no part of knowledge in fewer hands than that of discerning when to have done.
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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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Live every day as your last, because one of these days, it will be.
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The sight of you is good for sore eyes.
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Story-telling is subject to two unavoidable defects,--frequent repetition and being soon exhausted; so that, whoever values this gift in himself, has need of a good memory, and ought frequently to shift his company.
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A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.
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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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Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
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From not the gravest of Divines, Accept for once some serious Lines.
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The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little.
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Flattery is the worst and falsest way of showing our esteem.
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There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
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Neither are any wars so furious and bloody, or of so long continuance as those occasioned by difference in opinion, especially if it be in things indifferent.
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Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.
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The most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study.
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I love white Portugal wine better than claret, champagne, or burgundy. I have a sad vulgar appetite.
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Few are qualified to shine in company, but it is in most men's power to be agreeable.
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Books, like men their authors, have no more than one wayofcoming intothe world, but there areten thousand to go out of it, and return no more.
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I used to wonder how a man of birth and spirit could endure to be wholly insignificant and obscure in a foreign country, when he might live with lustre in his own.
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Men of wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.