Jonathan Swift Quotes

300 Sourced Quotes

The various opinions of philosophers have scattered through the world as many plagues of the mind as Pandora's box did those of the body; only with this difference, that they have not left hope at the bottom.

Jonathan Swift
An idle reason lessens the weight of the good ones you gave before.

Jonathan Swift
Orators inflame the people, whose anger is really but a short fit of madness.

Jonathan Swift
I hope you will be ready to own publicly, whenever you shall be called to it, that by your great and frequent urgency you prevailed on me to publish a very loose and uncorrect account of my travels, with directions to hire some young gentleman of either university to put them in order, and correct the style, as my cousin Dampier did, by my advice, in his book called "A Voyage round the world."

Jonathan Swift
With a whirl of thought oppressed
I sink from reverie to rest.
An horrid vision seized my head,
I saw the graves give up their dead.

Jonathan Swift
The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter and a scarcity of words; for whosoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt, in speaking, to hesitate upon the choice of both.

Jonathan Swift
Have you not observed that there is a lower kind of discretion and regularity, which seldom fails of raising men to the highest station in the court, the church, and the law?

Jonathan Swift
Although the devil be the father of lies, he seems, like other great inventors, to have lost much of his reputation by the continual improvements that have been made upon him.

Jonathan Swift
Under the rose, since here are none but friends, To own the truth we have some private ends.

Jonathan Swift
A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious and low.

Jonathan Swift
By the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your country you are and ought to be as free a people as your brethren in England.

Jonathan Swift
I cannot imagine why we should be at the expense to furnish wit for succeeding ages, when the former have made no sort of provision for ours.

Jonathan Swift
A traveler's chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad-as well as good example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.

Jonathan Swift
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.

Jonathan Swift
No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore, money is better than counsel.

Jonathan Swift
I would rather be a freeman among slaves than a slave among freemen.

Jonathan Swift
Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.

Jonathan Swift
It is in disputes as in armies, where the weaker side sets up false lights, and makes a great noise, to make the enemy believe them more numerous and strong than they really are.

Jonathan Swift
I'm up and down, and roundabout, Yet all the world can't find me out; Though hundreds have employ'd their leisure, They never yet could find my measure. I'm found almost in every garden, Nay, in the compass of a farthing. There's neither chariot, coach, nor mill, Can move an inch except I will.

Jonathan Swift
When we are old, our friends find it difficult to please us, and are less concerned whether we be pleased or not.

Jonathan Swift
A jargon form'd from the lost language, wit, Confounded in that Babel of the pit; Form'd by diseased conceptions, weak and wild, Sick lust of souls, and an abortive child; Born between whores and fops, by lewd compacts, Before the play, or else between the acts; Nor wonder, if from such polluted minds Should spring such short and transitory kinds.

Jonathan Swift
It is an uncontrolled truth, that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them.

Jonathan Swift
There seems to be no part of knowledge in fewer hands than that of discerning when to have done.

Jonathan Swift
Elephants are always drawn smaller than life, but a flea larger.

Jonathan Swift
They say Fish should swim thrice.... First it should swim in the Sea; (do you mind me?) then it should swim in Butter; and at last Sirrah, it should swim in good Claret.

Jonathan Swift
Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation td posterity? Let him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments.

Jonathan Swift
If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.

Jonathan Swift
Lose no time to contradict her, Nor endeavor to convict her; Only take this rule along, Always to advise her wrong, And reprove her when she's right; She may then grow wise for spite.

Jonathan Swift
The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little.

Jonathan Swift
Time is painted with a lock before, and bald behind, signifying thereby that we must take time by the forelock; for, when it is once past, there is no recalling it.

Jonathan Swift