Jonathan Swift - Time Quotes

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It is pleasant to observe, how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next. Future ages shall talk of this; this shall be famous to all posterity. Whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now.

Jonathan Swift
The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.

Jonathan Swift
For to enter the palace of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms, therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back-door

Jonathan Swift
If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.

Jonathan Swift
No preacher is listened to but time, which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have in vain tried to put into our heads before.

Jonathan Swift
It is computed, that eleven thousand persons have, at several times, suffered death, rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end.

Jonathan Swift
The greatest Inventions were produced in Times of Ignorance; as the use of the Compass, Gunpowder, and printing; and by the dullest Nation, as the Germans.

Jonathan Swift
Behold his funeral appears,
Nor widow's sighs, nor orphan's tears,
Wont at such times each heart to pierce,
Attend the progress of his hearse.
And what of that? his friends may say,
He had those honors in his day.
True to his profit and his pride,
He made them weep before he died.

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
This load-stone is under the care of certain astronomers, who from time to time give it such positions as the monarch directs. They spend the greatest part of their lives in observing the celestial bodies, which they do by the assistance of glasses, far excelling ours in goodness.

Jonathan Swift
He said that new systems of nature were but new fashions, which would vary in every age; and even those who pretend to demonstrate them from mathematical principles, would flourish but a short period of time, and be out of vogue when that [system of nature] was determined.

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

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
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
I forget whether advice be among the lost things which Ariosto says are to be found in the moon: that and time ought to have been there.

Jonathan Swift