Quotes By Jonathan Swift

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.

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

We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

May you live all the days of your life.

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.

Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.

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.

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

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

He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.

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

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

Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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