Jonathan Swift Quotes

“It is very unfair in any writer to employ ignorance and malice together, because it gives his answerer double work.”

“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.”

“Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them; as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like a face on the wall or the wainscot can, by two or three touches with a lead pencil, make it look visible, and agreeing with what he fancied.”

“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.”

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

“I would rather be a freeman among slaves than a slave among freemen.”

“Orators inflame the people, whose anger is really but a short fit of madness.”

“When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the good side or circumstances of it; when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad ones.”

“And he gave it for his opinion, "that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.”

“Come, agree, the law's costly.”

“It is computed that eleven thousand persons have at several times suffered death rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end.”

“It is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they are employed on as when they have lost their edge.”

“Desponding Phyllis was endu'dWith ev'ry Talent of a Prude,She trembled when a Man drew near;Salute her, and she turn'd her Ear:If o'er against her you were plac'dShe durst not look above your Waist”

“Whatever the poets pretend, it is plain they give immortality to none but themselves; it is Homer and Virgil we reverence and admire, not Achilles or Aeneas. With historians it is quite the contrary; our thoughts are taken up with the actions, persons, and events we read, and we little regard the authors.”

“Brisk talkers are generally slow thinkers.”

“Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs,Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.”

“The motives of the best actions will not bear too strict an inquiry. It is allowed that the cause of most actions, good or bad, may be resolved into the love of ourselves; but the self-love of some men inclines them to please others, and the self-love of others is wholly employed in pleasing themselves. This makes the great distinction between virtue and vice.”

“Rhetoric in serious discourses is like the flowers in corn; pleasing to those who come only for amusement, but prejudicial to him who would reap profit from it.”

“It may pass for a maxim in State, that the administration cannot be placed in too few hands, nor the legislature in too many.”

“It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.”

“Dignity, high station, or great riches, are in some sort necessary to old men, in order to keep the younger at a distance, who are otherwise too apt to insult them upon the score of their age.”

“It is the talent of human nature to run from one extreme to another.”

“Small causes are sufficient to make a man uneasy, when great ones are not in the way: for want of a block he will stumble at a straw.”

“There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.”

“Ay, do despise me, I'm the prouder for it; I like to be despised.”