Quotes By Jonathan Swift

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

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

The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.

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

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

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.

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

One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.

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

The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.

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

The want of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.

There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.

Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.

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

The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

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

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

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.

Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.