Jonathan Swift Quotes
page 2

Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, hence his common sobriquet, "Dean Swift".

Swift is remembered for works such as A Tale of a Tub , An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity , Gulliver's Travels , and A Modest Proposal . He is regarded by the Encyclopædia Britannica as the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. He originally published all of his works under pseudonyms – such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M. B. Drapier – or anonymously. He was a master of two styles of satire, the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.

His deadpan, ironic writing style, particularly in A Modest Proposal, has led to such satire being subsequently termed "Swiftian". Wikipedia

✵ 30. November 1667 – 19. October 1745

Jonathan Swift photo

Jonathan Swift: 141 quotes6 likes

Jonathan Swift Quotes

“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)

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

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 2

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

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 3

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

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

“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)

“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)

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

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

“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

“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.”

Conversation

“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)

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

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 2

“You must take the will for the deed.”

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 2

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

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

“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.”

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

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

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

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

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

“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.”

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

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

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.”

On Poetry: Poetry, a Rhapsody (1733)

“Hobbes clearly proves that every creature
Lives in a state of war by nature.”

On Poetry: Poetry, a Rhapsody (1733)

“How we apples swim!”

Brother Protestants; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable; for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.”

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

“So, naturalists observe, a flea
Hath smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bit 'em;
And so proceed ad infinitum.
Thus every poet, in his kind,
Is bit by him that comes behind.”

On Poetry: Poetry, a Rhapsody (1733)

“Do you think I was born in a wood to be afraid of an owl?”

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 1

“Not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.”

Letter to Bolingbroke (March 21, 1729); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“I have fed like a farmer: I shall grow as fat as a porpoise.”

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 2

“Lord, I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing!”

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 2

“She has more goodnessin her little finger, than he has in his whole body.”

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 2

“Here is laid the Body
of Jonathan Swift, Doctor of Sacred Theology,
Dean of this Cathedral Church,
where fierce Indignation
can no longer
injure the Heart.
Go forth, Voyager,
and copy, if you can,
this vigorous (to the best of his ability)
Champion of Liberty.”
Hic depositum est Corpus IONATHAN SWIFT S.T.D. Hujus Ecclesiæ Cathedralis Decani, Ubi sæva Indignatio Ulterius Cor lacerare nequit, Abi Viator Et imitare, si poteris, Strenuum pro virili Libertatis Vindicatorem.

Hic depositum est Corpus
IONATHAN SWIFT S.T.D.
Hujus Ecclesiæ Cathedralis
Decani,
Ubi sæva Indignatio
Ulterius
Cor lacerare nequit,
Abi Viator
Et imitare, si poteris,
Strenuum pro virili
Libertatis Vindicatorem.
Latin epitaph for himself (1740)
Variant translations:
Swift has sailed into his rest;
Savage indignation there
Cannot lacerate his Breast.
Imitate him if you dare,
World-Besotted Traveler; he
Served human liberty.
W. B. Yeats, in The Winding Stair (1933)
Here is laid the body of Jonathan Swift, Doctor of Divinity, Dean of this Cathedral Church, where savage indignation can no longer tear his heart. Go, traveller, and imitate if you can one who strove with all his might to champion liberty.
As translated in John Mullan's review of Jonathan Swift by Victoria Glendinning, in London Review of Books, Vol. 20 No. 21 (29 October 1998)
Epitaph (1740)

“Where Young must torture his invention
To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.”

On Poetry: Poetry, a Rhapsody (1733)

“But nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches, as to conceive how others can be in want.”

A Preface to the Bishop of Sarum's Introduction to the Third Volume of the History of the Reformation of the Church of England (8 December, 1713)

“A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.”

Jonathan Swift book A Modest Proposal

A Modest Proposal (1729)

“Then gave him some familiar Thumps,
A College Joke to cure the Dumps.”

Cassinus and Peter: A Tragical Elegy (1734); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Tis as cheap sitting as standing.”

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 1

“Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.”

Earlier proverb, quoted in James Howell's English Proverbs (1659)
Better belly burst than good drink lost.
Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 2

“Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping.”

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

“The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.”

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

“As learned commentators view
In Homer more than Homer knew.”

On Poetry: Poetry, a Rhapsody (1733)

Similar authors

Samuel Butler (poet) photo

Samuel Butler (poet)81

poet and satirist None

Richard Brinsley Sheridan photo

Richard Brinsley Sheridan58

Irish-British politician, playwright and writer None

Edmund Burke photo

Edmund Burke270

Anglo-Irish statesman None

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg137

German scientist, satirist None

Oliver Goldsmith photo

Oliver Goldsmith134

Irish physician and writer None