Jonathan Swift: Trending quotes

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“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

“There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake, though all the World sees them to be in downright nonsense.”

Jonathan Swift

The Tatler No. 63 (September 1709)

“Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind reception it meets with in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”

Jonathan Swift The Battle of the Books and Other Short Pieces

Source: The Battle of the Books and Other Short Pieces

“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

“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