Quotes By Jonathan Swift

There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.

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

Principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.

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

Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.

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

Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.

Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.

It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.

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

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

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.

If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.

Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting.

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

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.

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

Books, the children of the brain.

There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.

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

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

What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.

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.

He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.

Don't set your wit against a child.

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

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

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

The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.