Quotes By Jonathan Swift

Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.

For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.

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

Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.

Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.

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.

Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.

There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.

A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.

Principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.

The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.

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

Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.

Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.

It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.

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

I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.

If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.

Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.

Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting.

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.

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.

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.

Books, the children of the brain.

There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.

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

Where there are large powers with little ambition... nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes.

No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.