Jonathan Swift Quotes

300 Sourced Quotes

Good God! What a genius I had when I wrote that book [A Tale of a Tub].

Jonathan Swift
As boys do sparrows, with flinging salt upon their tails.

Jonathan Swift
The sciences are found, like Hercules's oxen, by tracing them backward; and old sciences are unravelled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot.

Jonathan Swift
I have ever hated all nations, professions and communities, and all my love is towards individuals…But principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.

Jonathan Swift
Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age…

Jonathan Swift
And surely one of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish had been left unsaid…

Jonathan Swift
When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the good side or circumstances of it; when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad ones.

Jonathan Swift
It is likewise to be observed that this society hath a peculiar chant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply.

Jonathan Swift
It is the folly of too many, to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.

Jonathan Swift
Hail, fellow, well met,
All dirty and wet:
Find out if you can,
Who's master, who's man.

Jonathan Swift
Conversation is but carving!
Give no more to every guest
Than he's able to digest.
Give him always of the prime,
And but little at a time.
Carve to all but just enough,
Let them neither starve nor stuff,
And that you may have your due,
Let your neighbor carve for you.

Jonathan Swift
I hate nobody: I am in charity with all the world.

Jonathan Swift
A set of phrases learnt by rote;
A passion for a scarlet coat;
When at a play to laugh, or cry,
Yet cannot tell the reason why:
Never to hold her tongue a minute;
While all she prates has nothing in it.

Jonathan Swift
I remember it was with extreme difficulty that I could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word opinion, or how a point could be disputable; because reason taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain; and beyond our knowledge we cannot do either.

Jonathan Swift
When a man is made a spiritual peer he loses his surname; when a temporal, his Christian name.

Jonathan Swift
So geographers, in Afric maps,
With savage pictures fill their gaps,
And o'er unhabitable downs
Place elephants for want of towns.

Jonathan Swift
For, in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery: but in fact, eleven men well armed will certainly subdue one single man in his shirt.

Jonathan Swift
In all distresses of our friends,
We first consult our private ends;
While nature, kindly bent to ease us,
Points out some circumstance to please us.

Jonathan Swift
I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.

Jonathan Swift
Poor Nations are hungry, and rich Nations are proud, and Pride and Hunger will ever be at Variance.

Jonathan Swift
For conversation well endued;
She calls it witty to be rude;
And, placing raillery in railing,
Will tell aloud your greatest failing.

Jonathan Swift
There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.

Jonathan Swift
A fig for partridges and quails, ye dainties I know nothing of ye; But on the highest mount in Wales Would choose in peace to drink my coffee.

Jonathan Swift
The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclined men in the course of virtue, but seldom or ever reclaims the vicious.

Jonathan Swift
It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of what he was never reasoned into.

Jonathan Swift
She wears her clothes, as if they were thrown on her with a pitchfork.

Jonathan Swift
The Bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.

Jonathan Swift
This single Stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected Corner, I once knew in a flourishing State in a Forest: It was full of Sap, full of Leaves, and full of Boughs: But now, in vain does the busy Art of Man pretend to vie with Nature, by tying that withered Bundle of Twigs to its sapless Trunk: It is at best but the Reverse of what it was; a Tree turned upside down, the Branches on the Earth, and the Root in the Air.

Jonathan Swift
The latter part of a wise man's life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former.

Jonathan Swift
Whoe'er excels in what we prize,
Appears a hero in our eyes;
Each girl, when pleased with what is taught,
Will have the teacher in her thought.
....
A blockhead with melodious voice,
In boarding-schools may have his choice.

Jonathan Swift