Jonathan Swift Quotes
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In all I wish, how happy should I be, Thou grand Deluder, were it not for thee? So weak thou art that fools thy power despise; And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise.
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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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Surely mortal man is a broomstick!
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Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
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One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.
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Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers because, whoever shares his thoughts with the public will convince them as he himself appears convinced.
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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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Don't set your wit against a child.
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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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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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Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together; Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.
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When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.
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You cannot reason a person out of something they were not reasoned into.
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There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
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I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.
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An atheist has got one point beyond the devil.
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Conversation is but carving! Give no more to every guest Than he's able to digest.
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You must take the will for the deed.
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For in that universal call, Few bankers will to heaven be mounters; They'll cry, "Ye shops, upon us fall! Conceal and cover us, ye counters! When other hands the scales shall hold, And they, in men's and angels' sight Produced with all their bills and gold, 'Weigh'd in the balance and found light!'
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When dunces are satiric, I take it for a panegyric.
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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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From not the gravest of Divines, Accept for once some serious Lines.
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Bread is the staff of life.
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Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.