Jonathan Swift Quotes

Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it.

Pride, ill nature, and want of sense are the three great sources of ill manners; without some one of these defects, no man will behave himself ill for want of experience, or what, in the language of fools, is called knowing the world.

Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.

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

'T is an old maxim in the schools, That flattery 's the food of fools; Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit.

How often do we contradict the right rules of reason in the whole course of our lives! Reason itself is true and just, but the reason of every particular man is weak and wavering, perpetually swayed and turned by his interests, his passions, and his vices.

All human race would be wits. And millions miss, for one that hits.

It often happens that, if a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done its work, and there is no further occasion for it.

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.

War: that mad game the world so loves to play.

The sciences are found, like Hercules's oxen, by tracing them backward; and old sciences are unravelled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot.

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.

Philosophy! the lumber of the schools.

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

In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

From not the gravest of Divines,Accept for once some serious Lines.

Say, Britain, could you ever boast, Three poets in an age at most? Our chilling climate hardly bears A sprig of bays in fifty years.

In all distresses of our friends We first consult our private ends; While Nature, kindly bent to ease us, Points out some circumstance to please us.

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.

In men desire begets love, and in women love begets desire.

Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.

Exploding many things under the name of trifles is a very false proof either of wisdom or magnanimity, and a great check to virtuous actions with regard to fame.

There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity; nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.

Nature has left every man a capacity of being agreeable, though not of shining in company; and there are a hundred men sufficiently qualified for both who, by a very few faults, that they might correct in half an hour, are not so much as tolerable.

Then, rising with Aurora's light, The Muse invoked, sit down to write; Blot out, correct, insert, refine, Enlarge, diminish, interline.

Whence proceeds this weight we layOn what detracting people say?Their utmost malice cannot makeYour head, or tooth, or finger ache;Nor spoil your shapes, distort your face,Or put one feature out of place.

When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.

Brisk talkers are usually slow thinkers. There is, indeed, no wild beast more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate. If you are civil to the voluble they will abuse your patience; if brusque, your character.

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

Perpetual aiming at wit is a very bad part of conversation. It is done to support a character: it generally fails; it is a sort of insult on the company, and a restraint upon the speaker.

I forget whether advice be among the lost things which Ariosto says are to be found in the moon: that and time ought to have been there.

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

When a man of genius appears in the world, it is immediately recognized by the fact that all the blockheads join forces against him.

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

Real vision is the ability to see the invisible.

An idle reason lessens the weight of the good ones you gave before.

Just get the right syllable in the proper place.

I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.

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

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.

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.

How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice when they will not so much as take warning.

There seems to be no part of knowledge in fewer hands than that of discerning when to have done.

Every age might perhaps produce one or two geniuses, if they were not sunk under the censure and obloquy of plodding, servile, imitating pedants.

As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.

We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.

Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone.

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

I know Sir John will go, though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs.

Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.

That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.

If the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my Travels.

Fond of those hives where folly reigns,And cards and scandal are the chains,Where the pert virgin slights a name,And scorns to redden into shame.

What we call the Irish Brogue is no sooner discovered, than it makes the deliverer, in the last degree, ridiculous and despised; and, from such a mouth, an Englishman expects nothing but bulls, blunders, and follies.

He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.

You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company.

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

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.