Quotes By Jonathan Swift

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.

Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.

I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.

Observation is an old man's memory.

My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.

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.

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

Every dog must have his day.

It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.

Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.

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.

Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.

Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.

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.

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

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.

A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention, by false speaking, to deceive and injure your neighbour.

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.

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

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.

May you live all the days of your life.

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