Top 100 Quotes About Jonathan Swift
#1. Like so many of his successors in the language-crank world today, though, (Jonathan) Swift not only loathes (the) banal and common change (language); he ascribes it to moral failing.
Robert Lane Greene
#2. Though it's true that (dictionary-maker Samuel) Johnson sometimes seem to feel that the language was in decline, he didn't rail against it with (Jonathan) Swift's anger. Instead, he hoped the example of his dictionary would temper that change by providing a distinguished literary example
Robert Lane Greene
#3. The most brilliant satire of all time was 'A Modest Proposal' by Jonathan Swift. You'll notice how everything got straightened out in Ireland within days of that coming out.
P. J. O'Rourke
#4. Jonathan Swift made a soul for the gentlemen of this city by hating his neighbor as himself.
W.B.Yeats
#5. It cannot rain but it pours." - JONATHAN SWIFT Oh,
Connie Willis
#6. I have now lost my barrier between me and death; God grant I may live to be as well prepared for it, as I confidently believe her to have been! If the way to Heaven be through piety, truth, justice and charity, she is there.
Jonathan Swift
#7. What we call the Irish Brogue is no sooner discovered, than it makes the deliverer, in the last degree, ridiculous and despised; and, from such a mouth, an Englishman expects nothing but bulls, blunders, and follies.
Jonathan Swift
#8. One principal object of good-breeding is to suit our behaviour to the three several degrees of men, our superiors, our equals, and those below us.
Jonathan Swift
#9. Conscience signifies that knowledge which a man hath of his own thoughts and actions; and because, if a man judgeth fairly of his actions by comparing them with the law of God, his mind will approve or condemn him; this knowledge or conscience may be both an accuser and a judge.
Jonathan Swift
#10. I likewise felt several slender ligatures across my body, from my arm-pits to my thighs. I could only look upwards; the sun began to grow hot, and the light offended my eyes. I heard a confused noise about me; but in the posture I lay, could see nothing except the sky.
Jonathan Swift
#11. Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.
Jonathan Swift
#12. Ah, a German and a genius ! A prodigy, admit him !
Jonathan Swift
#13. Dignity, high station, or great riches, are in some sort necessary to old men, in order to keep the younger at a distance, who are otherwise too apt to insult them upon the score of their age.
Jonathan Swift
#14. In all assemblies, though you wedge them ever so close, we may observe this peculiar property, that over their heads there is room enough; but how to reach it is the difficult point. To this end the philosopher's way in all ages has been by erecting certain edifices in the air.
Jonathan Swift
#16. "Lawyers Are": Those whose interests and abilities lie in perverting, confounding and eluding the law.
Jonathan Swift
#18. The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little.
Jonathan Swift
#20. Lose no time to contradict her, Nor endeavor to convict her; Only take this rule along, Always to advise her wrong, And reprove her when she's right; She may then grow wise for spite.
Jonathan Swift
#21. beholders. His features are strong and masculine, with an Austrian lip and arched nose, his complexion olive, his countenance erect, his body and limbs well proportioned, all his motions graceful, and his deportment majestic.
Jonathan Swift
#22. Opium is not so stupefying to many persons as an afternoon sermon.
Jonathan Swift
#23. The worst mark you can recieve is a promise, especially when it is confirmed with an oath; after which every man retires, and gives over all hopes. (referring to Chief Minister of State)
Jonathan Swift
#24. The most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study.
Jonathan Swift
#25. Nor do they trust their tongue alone, but speak a language of their own; can read a nod, a shrug, a look, far better than a printed book; convey a libel in a frown, and wink a reputation down.
Jonathan Swift
#26. As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.
Jonathan Swift
#29. From not the gravest of Divines,
Accept for once some serious Lines.
Jonathan Swift
#30. No preacher is listened to but time, which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have in vain tried to put into our heads before.
Jonathan Swift
#31. I forget whether advice be among the lost things which Ariosto says are to be found in the moon: that and time ought to have been there.
Jonathan Swift
#32. A prince, the moment he is crown'd,
Inherits every virtue sound,
As emblems of the sovereign power,
Like other baubles in the Tower:
Is generous, valiant, just, and wise,
And so continues till he dies.
Jonathan Swift
#33. O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee, whose graceless children scorn to own thee! . Yet thou hast greater cause to be ashamed of them, than they of thee.
Jonathan Swift
#34. God hath intended our passions to prevail over reason.
Jonathan Swift
#35. When a man is made a spiritual peer he loses his surname; when a temporal, his Christian name.
Jonathan Swift
#36. Careful observers may foretell the hour
(By sure prognostics) when to dread a show'r.
While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er
Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more.
Jonathan Swift
#37. 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.
Jonathan Swift
#38. I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.
Jonathan Swift
#39. His features are strong and masculine, with an Austrian lip and arched nose, his complexion olive, his countenance erect, his body and limbs well proportioned, all his motions graceful, and his deportment majestic. He
Jonathan Swift
#40. A fig for your bill of fare; show me your bill of company.
Jonathan Swift
#41. For they have no conception how a rational creature can be compelled, but only advised, or exhorted; because no person can disobey reason, without giving up his claim to be a rational creature.
Jonathan Swift
#42. Punning is a talent which no man affects to despise but he that is without it.
Jonathan Swift
#43. What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.
Jonathan Swift
#44. 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
#45. A traveler's chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad-as well as good example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.
Jonathan Swift
#46. Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.
Jonathan Swift
#47. Lilliputians think nothing can be more unjust, than for people, in subservience to their own appetites, to bring children into the world, and leave the burthen of supporting them on the public. As
Jonathan Swift
#48. I love white Portugal wine better than claret, champagne, or burgundy. I have a sad vulgar appetite.
Jonathan Swift
#49. It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next. "Future ages shall talk of this; they shall be famous to all posterity;" whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now.
Jonathan Swift
#50. Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
Jonathan Swift
#51. When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the good side or circumstances of it; when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad ones.
Jonathan Swift
#52. An idle reason lessens the weight of the good ones you gave before.
Jonathan Swift
#53. Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together; Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.
Jonathan Swift
#54. The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.
Jonathan Swift
#55. A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.
Jonathan Swift
#56. Love of flattery, in most men, proceeds from the mean opinion they have of themselves; in women, from the contrary.
Jonathan Swift
#57. 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
#58. It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.
Jonathan Swift
#59. There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity; nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.
Jonathan Swift
#60. For poetry, he's past his prime,
He takes an hour to find a rhyme;
His fire is out, his wit decayed,
His fancy sunk, his muse a jade.
I'd have him throw away his pen,
But there's no talking to some men.
Jonathan Swift
#61. What religion is he of?
Why, he is an Anythingarian.
Jonathan Swift
#62. I would rather be a freeman among slaves than a slave among freemen.
Jonathan Swift
#63. They all agreed, that I could not be produced according to the regular laws of nature; because I was not framed with a capacity of preserving my life, either by swiftness, or climbing of trees, or digging holes in the earth.
Jonathan Swift
#64. Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers because, whoever shares his thoughts with the public will convince them as he himself appears convinced.
Jonathan Swift
#65. For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
Jonathan Swift
#66. My father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the Third of five Sons.
Jonathan Swift
#67. There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
Jonathan Swift
#69. No man of honor, as the word is usually understood, did ever pretend that his honor obliged him to be chaste or temperate, to pay his creditors, to be useful to his country, to do good to mankind, to endeavor to be wise or learned, to regard his word, his promise, or his oath.
Jonathan Swift
#71. Men always grow vicious before they become unbelievers.
Jonathan Swift
#72. When the world has once begun to use us ill, it afterwards continues the same treatment with less scruple or ceremony, as men do to a whore.
Jonathan Swift
#73. How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice when they will not so much as take warning.
Jonathan Swift
#74. I have always a sacred veneration for anyone I observe to be a little out of repair in his person, as supposing him either a poet or a philosopher.
Jonathan Swift
#75. The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.
Jonathan Swift
#76. My horses understand me tolerably well; I converse with them at least four hours every day. They are strangers to bridle or saddle; they live in great amity with me, and friendship of each other.
Jonathan Swift
#77. Great abilities, when employed as God directs, do but make the owners of them greater and more painful servants to their neighbors.
Jonathan Swift
#78. When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
Jonathan Swift
#79. There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
Jonathan Swift
#80. No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore, money is better than counsel.
Jonathan Swift
#82. In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man uncapable of holding any public station; for, since kings avow themselves to be the deputies of Providence.
Jonathan Swift
#83. And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever 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
#84. A forward critic often dupes us With sham quotations peri hupsos, And if we have not read Longinus, Will magisterially outshine us. Then, lest with Greek he over-run ye, Procure the book for love or money, Translated from Boileau's translation, And quote quotation on quotation.
Jonathan Swift
#85. When a real genius appeares in this world, you'll know him by the fact that all the fools have allied against him.
Jonathan Swift
#86. Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting.
Jonathan Swift
#87. Oh how our neighbour lifts his nose,
To tell what every schoolboy knows.
Jonathan Swift
#90. When dunces are satiric, I take it for a panegyric.
Jonathan Swift
#91. There are but three ways for a man to revenge himself of the censure of the world,
to despise it, to return the like, or to endeavor to live so as to avoid it; the first of these is usually pretended, the last is almost impossible, the universal practice is for the second.
Jonathan Swift
#92. It is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they are employed on as when they have lost their edge.
Jonathan Swift
#93. An English tongue, if refined to a certain standard, might perhaps be fixed forever.
Jonathan Swift
#94. But a Broom-stick, perhaps you will say, is an Emblem of a Tree standing on its Head; and pray what is Man but a topsy-turvy Creature? His Animal Faculties perpetually mounted on his Rational; his Head where his Heels should be, groveling on the Earth.
Jonathan Swift
#95. Religion supposed Heaven and Hell, the word of God, and sacraments, and twenty other circumstances which, taken seriously, are a wonderful check to wit and humour.
Jonathan Swift
#96. If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning etc., beginning from his youth, and so go to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last.
Jonathan Swift
#97. By the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your country you are and ought to be as free a people as your brethren in England.
Jonathan Swift
#98. Venus, a beautiful, good-natured lady, was the goddess of love; Juno, a terrible shrew, the goddess of marriage: and they were always mortal enemies.
Jonathan Swift
#99. Brutes find out where their talents lie; a bear will not attempt to fly.
Jonathan Swift
#100. Everybody wants to live forever, but nobody wants to grow old.
Jonathan Swift
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