Jonathan Swift

“Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age.”

“It is a maxim, that those, to whom everybody allows the second place, have an undoubted title to the first.”

“All panegyrics are mingled with an infusion of poppy.”

“If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.”

“If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.”

“Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.”

“Arbitrary power is but the first natural step from anarchy, or the savage life.”

“Books, the children of the brain.”

“Lose no time to contradict her, Nor endeavor to convict her; Only take this rule along, Always to advise her wrong, And reprove her when she's right; She may then grow wise for spite.”

“My horses understand me tolerably well; I converse with them at least four hours every day. They are strangers to bridle or saddle; they live in great amity with me, and friendship of each other.”

“No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore, money is better than counsel.”

“The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.”

“Ever eating, never cloying, All-devouring, all-destroying Never finding full repast, Till I eat the world at last.”

“111 company is like a dog, who dirts those most whom he loves best.”

“Such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up.”

“Common fluency of speech in many men and most women is owing to a scarcity of matter.”

“And, is not Virtue in MankindThe Nutriment that feeds the Mind?”

“Hobbes clearly proves, that every creature Lives in a state of war by nature.”

“It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.”

“For want of a block, man will stumble at a straw.”

“The chameleon, who is said to feed upon nothing but air, has of all animals the nimblest tongue.”

“There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them.”

“Two friendships in two breasts requires The same aversions and desires.”

“A wise man will find us to be rogues by our faces.”

“My Lawyer being practiced almost from his Cradle in defending Falsehood; is quite out of his Element when he would be an Advocate for Justice, which as an Office unnatural, he always attempts with great Awkwardness if not with Ill-will.”

“I'll give you leave to call me anything, if you don't call me spade.”

“Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.”

“They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.”

“The ruin of a State is generally preceded by an universal degeneracy of manners and contempt of religion.”

“Possession, they say, is eleven points of the law.”

“I cannot but conclude that the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.”

“Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.”

“The greatest Inventions were produced in Times of Ignorance; as the Use of the Compass, Gunpowder, and Printing; and by the dullest Nation, as the Germans.”

“A traveler's chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad-as well as good example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.”

“I cannot imagine why we should be at the expense to furnish wit for succeeding ages, when the former have made no sort of provision for ours.”

“Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.”

“Everyone desires long life, not one old age.”

“Love of flattery, in most men, proceeds from the mean opinion they have of themselves; in women, from the contrary.”

“This Day, whate'er the Fates decree;Shall still be kept with Joy by me:This Day then, let us not be told,That you are sick, and I grown old”

“Ah, a German and a genius ! A prodigy, admit him !”

“Conversation is but carving! Give no more to every guest Than he's able to digest.”

“Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.”

“Your notions of friendship are new to me; I believe every man is born with his quantum, and he cannot give to one without robbing another. I very well know to whom I would give the first place in my friendship, but they are not in the way, I am condemned to another scene, and therefore I distribute it in pennyworths to those about me, and who displease me least, and should do the same to my fellow prisoners if I were condemned to a jail.”

“Argument is the worst sort of conversation.”

“Rebukes are easy from our betters,From men of quality and letters;But when low dunces will affront,What man alive can stand the brunt?”

“hoever wishes to win in this game must have patience and money, since the values are so little constant and the rumors so little founded on truth Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.”

“When a real genius appeares in this world, you'll know him by the fact that all the fools have allied against him.”

“O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee, whose graceless children scorn to own thee! . Yet thou hast greater cause to be ashamed of them, than they of thee.”

“A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.”

“Hail, follow, well met, All dirty and wet: Find out, if you can, Who's master, who's man.”