Jonathan Swift Quotes, Sayings, Remarks, Thoughts and Speeches
Jonathan Swift Quotes and Sayings
- 1
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.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 2
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.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 3
A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 4
A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 5
A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 6
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.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 7
As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 8
As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 9
Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 10
Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 11
Books, the children of the brain.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 12
Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 13
Don't set your wit against a child.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 14
Every dog must have his day.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 15
Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 16
For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 17
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.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 18
He was a bold man that first eat an oyster.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 19
He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 20
Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 21
I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 22
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.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 23
I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 24
I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 25
If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 26
Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 27
Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 28
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.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 29
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.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 30
It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 31
It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 32
Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 33
May you live all the days of your life.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 34
Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 35
Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 36
My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 37
No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 38
No wise man ever wished to be younger.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 39
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.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 40
Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 41
Observation is an old man's memory.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 42
Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 43
One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 44
Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 45
Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 46
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.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 47
Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 48
Principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 49
Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 50
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 51
The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 52
The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 53
The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 54
The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 55
The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 56
The want of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 57
There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 58
There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 59
There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 60
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.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 61
Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 62
Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 63
We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 64
We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 65
What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 66
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 67
Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 68
Where there are large powers with little ambition... nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
- 69
Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.
Jonathan Swift | Refcard PDF ↑
