Jonathan Swift Quotes

“Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind reception it meets with in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”

“So endless and exorbitant are the desires of men that they will grasp at all, and can form no scheme of perfect happiness with less.”

“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.”

“The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter and a scarcity of words; for whosoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt, in speaking, to hesitate upon the choice of both.”

“That incessant envy wherewith the common rate of mankind pursues all superior natures to their own.”

“It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.”

“To acknowledge you were wrong yesterday is simply to let the world know that you are wiser today than you were then.”

“An intelligent person should put money in the beginning, but not in heart”

“"Lawyers Are": Those whose interests and abilities lie in perverting, confounding and eluding the law.”

“There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.”

“There is no vice which mankind carries to such wild extremes as that of avarice.”

“Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.”

“Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.”

“The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word.”

“There is no quality so contrary to any nature which one cannot affect, and put on upon occasion, in order to serve an interest.”

“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.”

“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.”

“When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.”

“Praise is the daughter of present power.”

“A pleasant companion is as good as a coach.”

“Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.”

“Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination.”

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

“Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.”

“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.”