Swift, Jonathan
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Swift, Jonathan
Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.
Swift, Jonathan
Invention and Inventor
Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
Swift, Jonathan
Censure
For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labor, and search, and ranging through every corner of nature; the difference is that instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
Swift, Jonathan
Culture
Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches to conceive how others can be in want.
Swift, Jonathan
Charity
We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
Swift, Jonathan
Disease
She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitch folk.
Swift, Jonathan
Dress
Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.
Swift, Jonathan
Invention and Inventor
The most positive men are the most credulous.
Swift, Jonathan
Credulity
The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.
Swift, Jonathan
Doctors
I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.
Swift, Jonathan
Greatness
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.
Swift, Jonathan
Churches
Complaint is the largest tribute Heaven receives.
Swift, Jonathan
Complaints and Complaining
May you live all the days of your life.
Swift, Jonathan
Life and Living
When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
Swift, Jonathan
Genius
Happiness is a perpetual possession of being well deceived.
Swift, Jonathan
Happiness
One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.
Swift, Jonathan
Enemies
Your notions of friendship are new to me; I believe every man is born with his quantum, and he cannot give to one without robbing another. I very well know to whom I would give the first place in my friendship, but they are not in the way, I am condemned to another scene, and therefore I distribute it in pennyworths to those about me, and who displease me least, and should do the same to my fellow prisoners if I were condemned to a jail.
Swift, Jonathan
Friends and Friendship
Pretense is the overrating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to.
Swift, Jonathan
Exaggeration
Two friendships in two breasts requires The same aversions and desires.
Swift, Jonathan
Friends and Friendship
I will venture to affirm, that the three seasons wherein our corn has miscarried did no more contribute to our present misery, than one spoonful of water thrown upon a rat already drowned would contribute to his death; and that the present plentiful harvest, although it should be followed by a dozen ensuing, would no more restore us, than it would the rat aforesaid to put him near the fire, which might indeed warm his fur-coat, but never bring him back to life.
Swift, Jonathan
Famine
I said there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are as slaves.
Swift, Jonathan
Law and Lawyers
All human race would be wits. And millions miss, for one that hits.
Swift, Jonathan
Jokes and Jokers
As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.
Swift, Jonathan
Love
Come, agree, the law s costly.
Swift, Jonathan
Law Suits
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.
Swift, Jonathan
Manners
Observation is an old man s memory.
Swift, Jonathan
Memory
What some people invent the rest enlarge.
Swift, Jonathan
Humor
I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
Swift, Jonathan
Kisses and Kissing
In the school of political projectors, I was but ill entertained, the professors appearing, in my judgment, wholly out of their senses; which is a scene that never fails to make me melancholy. These unhappy people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favorites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue; of teaching ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great abilities, and eminent services, of instructing princes to know their true interest, by placing it on the same foundation with that of their people; of choosing for employment persons qualified to exercise them; with many other wild impossible chimeras, that never entered before into the heart of man to conceive; and confirmed in me the old observation, that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational which some philosophers have not maintained for truth.
Swift, Jonathan
Politicians and Politics
Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.
Swift, Jonathan
Power
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.
Swift, Jonathan
Optimism
A footman may swear; but he cannot swear like a lord. He can swear as often: but can he swear with equal delicacy, propriety, and judgment?
Swift, Jonathan
Swearing
Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
Swift, Jonathan
Nations
Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
Swift, Jonathan
Men
Promises and pie crusts are made to be broken.
Swift, Jonathan
Promises
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.
Swift, Jonathan
Precedents
The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance and never to keep his work.
Swift, Jonathan
Politicians and Politics
Don t set your wit against a child.
Swift, Jonathan
Parents and Parenting
A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.
Swift, Jonathan
Money
There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
Swift, Jonathan
Mistakes
It was a bold person that first ate an oyster.
Swift, Jonathan
Risk
Nor do they trust their tongue alone, but speak a language of their own; can read a nod, a shrug, a look, far better than a printed book; convey a libel in a frown, and wink a reputation down.
Swift, Jonathan
Scandal
He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers.
Swift, Jonathan
Science and Scientists
It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.
Swift, Jonathan
Public Opinion
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.
Swift, Jonathan
Strength
Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
Swift, Jonathan
Understanding
But you think that it is time for me to have done with the world, and so I would if I could get into a better before I was called into the best, and not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.
Swift, Jonathan
Self-improvement
Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.
Swift, Jonathan
Reason
If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.
Swift, Jonathan
Riches
I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
Swift, Jonathan
Shame
Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.
Swift, Jonathan
Sensuality
The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.
Swift, Jonathan
Style
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.
Swift, Jonathan
Sarcasm
As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
Swift, Jonathan
Blush
There s none so blind as they that won t see.
Swift, Jonathan
Blindness
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child, well nursed, is at a year old, a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout.
Swift, Jonathan
Children
What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.
Swift, Jonathan
Heaven
One of the very best rules of conversation is to never, say anything which any of the company wish had been left unsaid.
Swift, Jonathan
Conversation
And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
Swift, Jonathan
Ecology
Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as in books it is generally the worst sort of reading.
Swift, Jonathan
Argument
The latter part of a wise person s life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.
Swift, Jonathan
Age and Aging
No wise man ever wished to be younger.
Swift, Jonathan
Age and Aging
Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.
Swift, Jonathan
Age and Aging
The lack of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.
Swift, Jonathan
Belief
Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.
Swift, Jonathan
Alcohol and Alcoholism
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.
Swift, Jonathan
Death and Dying
Faith! he must make his stories shorter or change his comrades once a quarter.
Swift, Jonathan
Anecdotes
In church your grandsire cut his throat; to do the job too long he tarried: he should have had my hearty vote to cut his throat before he married.
Swift, Jonathan
Ancestry
Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping.
Swift, Jonathan
Ambition
Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
Swift, Jonathan
Vanity
O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee, whose graceless children scorn to own thee! . Yet thou hast greater cause to be ashamed of them, than they of thee.
Swift, Jonathan
Writers and Writing
Style may defined as the proper words in the proper places.
Swift, Jonathan
Writers and Writing
Whoever wishes to win in this game must have patience and money, since the values are so little constant and the rumors so little founded on truth Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.
Swift, Jonathan
Winners and Winning
Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.
Swift, Jonathan
Vision
It is as hard to satirize well a man of distinguished vices, as to praise well a man of distinguished virtues.
Swift, Jonathan
Virtue