Words matter. These are the best Jonathan Swift Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.
The latter part of a wise person’s life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.
Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
Principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.
If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.
A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying… that he is wiser today than yesterday.
The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.
As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.
Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.
Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting.
Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
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.
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.
Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.
Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.
May you live all the days of your life.
Every dog must have his day.
A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.
Books, the children of the brain.
There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
Books, the children of the brain.
The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.
It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.
Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.
Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.
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.
Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
Observation is an old man’s memory.
Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.
I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.
Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
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.
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.
What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.
A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.
The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.
I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.
Where there are large powers with little ambition… nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes.
The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.
Every dog must have his day.
As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.
Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.
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.
Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.
The want of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.
Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
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.
Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.
Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.
Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting.
No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.
My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.
One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.
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.
No wise man ever wished to be younger.
Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
Observation is an old man’s memory.
I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.
The latter part of a wise person’s life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.
The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.
Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.
We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.
Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
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.
My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
