Jonathan Swift: Trending quotes (page 5)

“Fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.”

Jonathan Swift

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 2

“T is happy for him that his father was before him.”

Jonathan Swift

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 3

Happiness

“The Bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.”

Jonathan Swift

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

Thinking , Flying

“He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers.”

Jonathan Swift book Les Voyages de Gulliver

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

Summer

“There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof, I hope, there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am not understood, it shall be concluded, that something very useful and profound is couched underneath; and again, that whatever word or sentence is printed in a different character, shall be judged to contain something extraordinary either or wit of sublime.”

Jonathan Swift book A Tale of a Tub

Preface
A Tale of a Tub (1704)

Hope

“Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.”

Jonathan Swift

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

“Tis an old maxim in the schools,
That flattery's the food of fools;
Yet now and then your men of wit
Will condescend to take a bit.”

Jonathan Swift book Cadenus and Vanessa

Cadenus and Vanessa (1713)

Men , School , Food , Fools

“I can discover no political evil in suffering bullies, sharpers, and rakes, to rid the world of each other by a method of their own; where the law hath not been able to find an expedient.”

Jonathan Swift book A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding

A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding

World , Law , Suffering , Evil

“Conversation is but carving!
Give no more to every guest
Than he's able to digest.
Give him always of the prime,
And but little at a time.
Carve to all but just enough,
Let them neither starve nor stuff,
And that you may have your due,
Let your neighbor carve for you.”

Jonathan Swift

Conversation

Time

“He made it a part of his religion never to say grace to his meat.”

Jonathan Swift book A Tale of a Tub

Sect. 11
A Tale of a Tub (1704)

Religion , Parting

“Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps as 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

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

Men

“They say a carpenter's known by his chips.”

Jonathan Swift

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 2

“You must take the will for the deed.”

Jonathan Swift

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 2

“I shall be like that tree; I shall die from the top.”

Jonathan Swift

Predicting that he would go senile, as quoted in The Highway of Letters and its Echos of Famous Footsteps (1893) by Thomas Archer, p. 380

Tree

“Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and orators, because he that would obtrude his thoughts and reasons upon a multitude, will convince others the more, as he appears convinced himself.”

Jonathan Swift

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

Appearance

“So weak thou art, that fools thy power despise;
And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise.”

Jonathan Swift

To Love, found in Miss Vanhomrigh's desk after her death, in Swift's handwriting

Fools , Art , Strong

“Reason is a very light rider and easily shook off.”

Jonathan Swift

As quoted in The World's Laconics : Or, The Best Thoughts Of The Best Authors (1827) by Johan TImbs, p. 25

Light

“What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not we are told expressly: that they neither marry, nor are given in marriage.”

Jonathan Swift

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

Marriage

“If it had been a bear it would have bit you.”

Jonathan Swift

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 1

“So geographers, in Afric maps,
With savage pictures fill their gaps,
And o'er unhabitable downs
Place elephants for want of towns.”

Jonathan Swift

On Poetry: Poetry, a Rhapsody (1733)