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Quotes by Jonathan Swift

Rebukes are easy from our betters,
From men of quality and letters;
But when low dunces will affront,
What man alive can stand the brunt?
– Jonathan Swift
May you live every day of your life.
– Jonathan Swift
The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
– Jonathan Swift
But when a Man’s Fancy gets astride on his Reason, when Imagination is at Cuffs with the Senses, and common Understanding, as well as common Sense, is Kickt out of Doors; the first Proselyte he makes, is Himself, and when that is once compass’d, the Difficulty is not so great in bringing over others; a strong Delusion always operating from without, as vigorously as from within.
– Jonathan Swift
A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.
– Jonathan Swift
I row after health like a waterman...
– Jonathan Swift
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
It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
– Jonathan Swift
May you live all the days of your life.
– Jonathan Swift
No wise man ever wished to be younger.
– Jonathan Swift
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.
– Jonathan Swift
Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping.
– Jonathan Swift
Words are but wind and learning is nothing but words ergo, learning is nothing but wind.
– Jonathan Swift
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
– Jonathan Swift
We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
– Jonathan Swift
Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.
– Jonathan Swift
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
The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.
– Jonathan Swift
The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.
– Jonathan Swift
Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.
– Jonathan Swift
Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.
– Jonathan Swift
No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.
– Jonathan Swift
Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
– Jonathan Swift
Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.
– Jonathan Swift
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
I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.
– Jonathan Swift
He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
– Jonathan Swift
Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.
– Jonathan Swift
For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
– Jonathan Swift
Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps 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