Quotes By Jonathan Swift

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

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

Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.

Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.

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.

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

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

He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.

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.