Quotes from book
Les Voyages de Gulliver

Jonathan Swift

Gulliver's Travels, or Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships is a prose satire of 1726 by the Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, satirising both human nature and the "travellers' tales" literary subgenre. It is Swift's best known full-length work, and a classic of English literature. Swift claimed that he wrote Gulliver's Travels "to vex the world rather than divert it".

Jonathan Swift photo

“Every man desires to live long, but no man would be old.”

Jonathan Swift book Les Voyages de Gulliver

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)
Variant: All would live long, but none would be old.
Source: Gulliver's Travels

Jonathan Swift photo

“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)

Jonathan Swift photo

“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

Jonathan Swift photo

“This made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavor to do himself honor among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him.”

Jonathan Swift book Les Voyages de Gulliver

Source: Gulliver's Travels

Jonathan Swift photo

“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

Jonathan Swift photo

“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

Jonathan Swift photo

“He is taller by almost the breadth of my nail, than any of his court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into the beholders.”

Jonathan Swift book Les Voyages de Gulliver

On the Emperor of Lilliput, in Voyage to Lilliput, Ch. 2
Gulliver's Travels (1726)

Jonathan Swift photo

“Poor Nations are hungry, and rich Nations are proud, and Pride and Hunger will ever be at Variance.”

Jonathan Swift book Les Voyages de Gulliver

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

Jonathan Swift photo

“And he gave it for his opinion, that whosoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.”

Jonathan Swift book Les Voyages de Gulliver

Voyage to Brobdingnag, Ch. 7 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Gulliver%27s_Travels/Part_II/Chapter_VII
Gulliver's Travels (1726)

Jonathan Swift photo

“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)

Jonathan Swift photo

“I said the thing which was not.”

Jonathan Swift book Les Voyages de Gulliver

For they have no word in their language to express lying or falsehood.
Voyage to Houyhnhnms, Ch. 3
Gulliver's Travels (1726)

Similar authors

Jonathan Swift photo
Jonathan Swift 141
Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet 1667–1745
Samuel Butler (poet) photo
Samuel Butler (poet) 81
poet and satirist
Richard Brinsley Sheridan photo
Richard Brinsley Sheridan 58
Irish-British politician, playwright and writer
Edmund Burke photo
Edmund Burke 270
Anglo-Irish statesman
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg 137
German scientist, satirist
Oliver Goldsmith photo
Oliver Goldsmith 134
Irish physician and writer
Joseph Joubert photo
Joseph Joubert 253
French moralist and essayist
Joseph Addison photo
Joseph Addison 226
politician, writer and playwright
Matthias Claudius photo
Matthias Claudius 1
German poet
Robert Burns photo
Robert Burns 114
Scottish poet and lyricist