Quotes by Jonathan Swift

"Proper words in proper places, make the true definition of a style."

"Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through."

"Words are but wind and learning is nothing but words ergo, learning is nothing but wind."

"When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him."

"Every man desires tolive long; but no man would be old."

"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."

"No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience."

"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."

"The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit."

"Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent."

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

"Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed."

"Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age."

"A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle."

"May you live all the days of your life."

"Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age."

"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."

"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."

"We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another."

"We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another."

"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

"There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency."

"Vision is the art of seeing things invisible."

"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."

"Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own."

"As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold."

"Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions."

"For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery."

"Observation is an old man's memory."

"The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable; for the happy impute all their success to prudence and merit."

"'Tis an old maxim in the schools, That flattery's the food of fools; Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit."

"Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly."

"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."

"Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others."

"He was a bold man that first ate an oyster."

"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."

"A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart."

"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."

"Where there are large powers with little ambition... nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes."

"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."

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

"A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart."

"I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning."