Quotes By Jonathan Swift

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

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

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

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

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

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.