Jonathan Swift Quotes (141 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift (1731), l. 459
Context: Yet malice never was his aim;
He lashed the vice but spared the name.
No individual could resent,
Where thousands equally were meant.
His satire points at no defect
But what all mortals may correct;
For he abhorred that senseless tribe
Who call it humor when they gibe.

“She wears her clothes, as if they were thrown on her with a pitchfork.”

Jonathan Swift

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 1

“May you live all the days of your life.”

Jonathan Swift

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 2

Jonathan Swift Quotes

“Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it”

Jonathan Swift

The Examiner No. XIV (Thursday, November 9th, 1710)
Context: Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect: like a man, who hath thought of a good repartee when the discourse is changed, or the company parted; or like a physician, who hath found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.

“There is nothing in this World constant but Inconstancy”

Jonathan Swift

A Tritical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind (1707)
Context: ALL Rivers go to the Sea, but none return from it. Xerxes wept when he beheld his Army, to consider that in less than a Hundred Years they would be all Dead. Anacreon was' Choakt with a Grape-stone, and violent Joy Kills as well as violent Grief. There is nothing in this World constant but Inconstancy; yet Plato thought that if Virtue would appear to the World in her own native Dress, all Men would be Enamoured with her. But now since Interest governs the World, and Men neglect the Golden Mean, Jupiter himself, if he came on the Earth would be Despised, unless it were as he did to Danae in a Golden Shower. For Men nowadays Worship the Rising Sun, and not the Setting.

“Men nowadays Worship the Rising Sun, and not the Setting.”

Jonathan Swift

“ALL Rivers go to the Sea, but none return from it.”

Jonathan Swift

“I said the thing which was not.”

Jonathan Swift book Les Voyages de Gulliver

For they have no word in their language to express lying or falsehood.
Voyage to Houyhnhnms, Ch. 3
Gulliver's Travels (1726)

“Books, the children of the brain.”

Jonathan Swift book A Tale of a Tub

Sect. 1
A Tale of a Tub (1704)
Source: A Tale Of A Tub And Other Writings

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

Jonathan Swift

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

“Every man desires to live long, but no man would be old.”

Jonathan Swift book Les Voyages de Gulliver

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)
Variant: All would live long, but none would be old.
Source: Gulliver's Travels

“Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired…”

Jonathan Swift

Letter to a Young Clergyman (January 9, 1720), on proving Christianity to unbelievers

“Laws are like Cobwebs which may catch small Flies, but let Wasps and Hornets break through.”

Jonathan Swift

A Tritical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind (1707)
Context: Laws are like Cobwebs which may catch small Flies, but let Wasps and Hornets break through. But in Oratory the greatest Art is to hide Art.

“He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.”

Jonathan Swift

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 2

“I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.”

Jonathan Swift book Les Voyages de Gulliver

Voyage to Brobdingnag, Ch. 6
Source: Gulliver's Travels (1726)

“Libertas et natale solum:
Fine words! I wonder where you stole 'em.”

Jonathan Swift

Verses Occasioned by Whitshed's Motto on his Coach (1724); the Latin indicates "liberty and my native land", and Whitshed was a chief justice enraged by The Drapier's Letters

“Every dog must have his day.”

Jonathan Swift

“Undoubtedly, philosophers are in the right when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.”

Jonathan Swift book Les Voyages de Gulliver

Source: Gulliver's Travels

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

Jonathan Swift

Letter to a Young Clergyman http://www.online-literature.com/swift/religion-church-vol-one/7/ (January 9, 1720)

“No wise man ever wished to be younger.”

Jonathan Swift

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

“You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday”

Jonathan Swift

Alexander Pope, Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727), Published in Swift's Miscellanies (1727)
Misattributed
Variant: A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.

“The tiny Lilliputians surmise that Gulliver's watch may be his god, because it is that which, he admits, he seldom does anything without consulting.”

Jonathan Swift book Les Voyages de Gulliver

Source: Gulliver's Travels

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

Jonathan Swift

“Happiness is the perpetual possession of being well deceived.”

Jonathan Swift

“That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.”

Jonathan Swift

“We of this age have discovered a shorter, and more prudent method to become scholars and wits, without the fatigue of reading or of thinking.”

Jonathan Swift

“If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.”

Jonathan Swift

“The latter part of a wise man’s life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former.”

Jonathan Swift

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

“Difference in opinions has cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine.”

Jonathan Swift book Les Voyages de Gulliver

Source: Gulliver's Travels

“A soldier is a "Yahoo" hired to kill in cold blood as many of his own Species, who have never offended him, as possibly he can.”

Jonathan Swift

“This made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavor to do himself honor among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him.”

Jonathan Swift book Les Voyages de Gulliver

Source: Gulliver's Travels

“I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.”

Jonathan Swift

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 1

“Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.”

Jonathan Swift

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 1

“It is impossible that any thing so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.”

Jonathan Swift

Thoughts on Religion (1765), published posthumously

“I mean you lie—under a mistake.”

Jonathan Swift

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 1

“That's as well said, as if I had said it myself.”

Jonathan Swift

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 2

“There is, indeed, no wild beast more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate.”

Jonathan Swift

Christian Nestell Bovee, in Intuitions and Summaries of Thought (1862), Volume I, p. 124
Misattributed

“Bread is the staff of life.”

Jonathan Swift book A Tale of a Tub

Preface
A Tale of a Tub (1704)

“Tis very warm weather when one's in bed.”

Jonathan Swift

Journal to Stella (November 8, 1710)

“She looks as if butter wou'dn't melt in her mouth.”

Jonathan Swift

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 1

“He is taller by almost the breadth of my nail, than any of his court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into the beholders.”

Jonathan Swift book Les Voyages de Gulliver

On the Emperor of Lilliput, in Voyage to Lilliput, Ch. 2
Gulliver's Travels (1726)

“A set of phrases learnt by rote;
A passion for a scarlet coat;
When at a play to laugh, or cry,
Yet cannot tell the reason why:
Never to hold her tongue a minute;
While all she prates has nothing in it.”

Jonathan Swift

The Furniture of a Woman's Mind (1727)

“I love good creditable acquaintance; I love to be the worst of the company.”

Jonathan Swift

Journal to Stella (May 17, 1711)

“Poor Nations are hungry, and rich Nations are proud, and Pride and Hunger will ever be at Variance.”

Jonathan Swift book Les Voyages de Gulliver

Voyage to Houyhnhnms, Ch. 5
Gulliver's Travels (1726)

“Those dreams that on the silent night intrude,
And with false flitting shapes our minds delude
… are mere productions of the brain.
And fools consult interpreters in vain.”

Jonathan Swift

On Dreams (1727)

“And he gave it for his opinion, that whosoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.”

Jonathan Swift book Les Voyages de Gulliver

Voyage to Brobdingnag, Ch. 7 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Gulliver%27s_Travels/Part_II/Chapter_VII <br class="br">Gulliver's Travels (1726)

“I 've often wish'd that I had clear,
For life, six hundred pounds a year;
A handsome house to lodge a friend;
A river at my garden's end;
A terrace walk, and half a rood
Of land set out to plant a wood.”

Jonathan Swift

Imitation of Horace, book ii. Sat. 6.; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“The Stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.”

Jonathan Swift

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

“You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come;
Knock as you please, there's nobody at home.”

Jonathan Swift

On a Dull Writer, reported in John Hawkesworth, The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin (1754), p. 265. Alternately attributed to Alexander Pope by Bartlett's Quotations, 10th Edition (1919). Compare: "His wit invites you by his looks to come, But when you knock, it never is at home", William Cowper, Conversation, line 303
Disputed

“She pays him in his own coin.”

Jonathan Swift

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 3

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

Jonathan Swift

John Hawkesworth, The Adventurer, No. 36 (10 March, 1753)
Misattributed

“…one enemy can do more hurt, than ten friends can do good.”

Jonathan Swift

Journal to Stella (30 June, 1711)

“Sharp's the word with her.”

Jonathan Swift

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 3