Jonathan Swift Quotes (141 quotes, page 3)

Jonathan Swift: 141 quotes 6 likes

Jonathan Swift Quotes

“Complaint is the largest tribute heaven receives, and the sincerest part of our devotion.”

Jonathan Swift

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

Parting

“If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.”

Jonathan Swift

Letter to Miss Vanhomrigh (August 12, 1720)

“The two maxims of any great man at court are always to keep his countenance and never to keep his word.”

Jonathan Swift

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Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

“The sight of you is good for sore eyes.”

Jonathan Swift

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 1

“It is a maxim, that those to whom everybody allows the second place have an undoubted title to the first.”

Jonathan Swift book A Tale of a Tub

Dedication
A Tale of a Tub (1704)

“There's two words to that bargain.”

Jonathan Swift

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 3

“A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.”

Jonathan Swift

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

Idea

“When I behold this I sighed, and said within myself, "Surely mortal man is a broomstick!" Nature sent him into the world strong and lusty, in a thriving condition, wearing his own hair on his head, the proper branches of this reasoning vegetable, till the axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs, and left him a withered trunk; he then flies to art, and puts on a periwig, valuing himself upon an unnatural bundle of hairs, all covered with powder, that never grew on his head; but now should this our broomstick pretend to enter the scene, proud of those birchen spoils it never bore, and all covered with dust, through the sweepings of the finest lady's chamber, we should be apt to ridicule and despise its vanity. Partial judges that we are of our own excellencies, and other men's defaults!”

Jonathan Swift

Meditation on a Broomstick (1703–1710)

Men , World , Art , Nature

“For conversation well endued;
She calls it witty to be rude;
And, placing raillery in railing,
Will tell aloud your greatest failing.”

Jonathan Swift

The Furniture of a Woman's Mind (1727)

“I thought you and he were hand-in-glove.”

Jonathan Swift

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 2

“A penny for your thoughts.”

Jonathan Swift

Introduction.
Polite Conversation (1738)

“There was all the world and his wife.”

Jonathan Swift

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 3

World

“Nothing is so great an instance of ill manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; if you flatter only one or two, you affront the rest.”

Jonathan Swift

Hints on Good Manners

“Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.”

Jonathan Swift book A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding

A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding

Nature , Sense

“We are so fond of one another, because our ailments are the same.”

Jonathan Swift

Journal to Stella (February 1, 1711)

“Lord M. What religion is he of?
Lord Sp. Why, he is an Anythingarian.”

Jonathan Swift

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 1

Religion

“She watches him as a cat would watch a mouse.”

Jonathan Swift

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 3

Cats

“Hail fellow, well met.”

Jonathan Swift

My Lady's Lamentation, The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. II, edited by William Ernst Browning (1910); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)