Jonathan Swift: Trending quotes

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Jonathan Swift: 282 quotes6 likes

“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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 3

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

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

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

Journal to Stella (30 June, 1711)

“Sharp's the word with her.”

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 3

“Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age…”

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

“Seamen have a custom, when they meet a whale, to fling him out an empty tub by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the ship.”

Jonathan Swift book A Tale of a Tub

Preface
A Tale of a Tub (1704)

“I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world.”

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 1

“Instead of dirt and poison we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax; thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.”

Jonathan Swift book The Battle of the Books

The Battle of the Books, preface (1704)

“I'll give you leave to call me anything, if you don't call me "spade."”

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 2

“And surely one of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish had been left unsaid…”

Hints Toward an Essay on Conversation (1709)

“Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions, and consequently of no use to a good king or a good ministry; for which reason Courts are so overrun with politics.”

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

“She's no chicken; she's on the wrong side of thirty, if she be a day.”

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 1

“I know Sir John will go, though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs.”

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 2

“There is none so blind as they that won't see.”

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 3

“Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy is the best bred in the company.”

Jonathan Swift book A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding

A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding (1754, published posthumously)

“I always love to begin a journey on Sundays, because I shall have the prayers of the church to preserve all that travel by land, or water.”

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 2

“I have one word to say upon the subject of profound writers, who are grown very numerous of late; and I know very well the judicious world is resolved to list me in that number. I conceive therefore, as to the business of being profound, that it is with writers as with wells - a person with good eyes may see to the bottom of the deepest, provided any water be there: and often when there is nothing in the world at the bottom besides dryness and dirt, though it be but a yard and a-half under-ground, it shall pass, however, for wondrous deep upon no wiser reason than because it is wondrous dark”

Jonathan Swift book A Tale of a Tub

A Tale of a Tub (1704)