Jonathan Swift Quotes

Some time after, asking a friend at court how they came to fix on that determinate number, he told me that his majesty's mathematicians, having taken the height of my body by the help of a quadrant, and finding it to exceed theirs in the proportion of twelve to one, they concluded from the similarity of their bodies, that mine must contain at least 1724 of theirs, and consequently would require as much food as was necessary to support that number of Lilliputians. By

Good manners is the art of making people comfortable. Whoever makes the fewest people uncomfortable has the best manners.

Polite Conversation 'Tis happy for him, that his father was before him.

As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.

This single Stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected Corner, I once knew in a flourishing State in a Forest: It was full of Sap, full of Leaves, and full of Boughs: But now, in vain does the busy Art of Man pretend to vie with Nature, by tying that withered Bundle of Twigs to its sapless Trunk: It is at best but the Reverse of what it was; a Tree turned upside down, the Branches on the Earth, and the Root in the Air.

111 company is like a dog, who dirts those most whom he loves best.

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.

With a whirl of thought oppressed
I sink from reverie to rest.
An horrid vision seized my head,
I saw the graves give up their dead.

The sight of you is good for sore eyes.

Rhetoric in serious discourses is like the flowers in corn; pleasing to those who come only for amusement, but prejudicial to him who would reap profit from it.

Great abilities, when employed as God directs, do but make the owners of them greater and more painful servants to their neighbors.

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

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.

God hath intended our passions to prevail over reason.

If a lump of soot falls into the soup and you cannot conveniently get it out, stir it well in and it will give the soup a French taste.

However, in my thoughts I could not sufficiently wonder at the intrepidity of these diminutive mortals, who durst venture to mount and walk upon my body, while one of my hands was at liberty, without trembling at the very sight of so prodigious a creature as I must appear to them.

A stander-by may sometimes, perhaps, see more of the game than he that plays it.

A Child will make two Dishes at an Entertainment for Friends; and when the Family dines alone, the fore or hind Quarter will makea reasonable Dish; and seasoned with a little Pepper or Salt, will be very good Boiled on the fourth Day, especially in Winter.

Every dog must have his day.

Truth shines the brighter clad in verse.

What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.

Nothing more unqualified the man to act with prudence than a misfortune that is attended with shame and guilt.

Silks, velvets, calicoes, and the whole lexicon of female fopperies.

Wisdom is a fox who, after long hunting, will at last cost you the pains to dig out; it is a cheese, which, by how much the richer, has the thicker, the homlier, and the coarser coat; and whereof to a judicious palate, the maggots are best. It is a sack posset, wherein the deeper you go, you'll find it the sweeter. Wisdom is a hen, whose cackling we must value and consider, because it is attended with an egg. But lastly, it is a nut, which, unless you choose with judgment, may cost you a tooth, and pay you with nothing but a worm.

Small causes are sufficient to make a man uneasy, when great ones are not in the way: for want of a block he will stumble at a straw.

These reasonings will furnish us with an adequate definition of a true critic: that he is a discoverer and collector of writers' faults. Which may be farther put beyond dispute by the following demonstration: that whoever will examine the writings in all kinds, wherewith this ancient sect has honoured the world, shall immediately find, from the whole thread and tenor of them, that the ideas of the authors have been altogether conversant and taken up with the faults and blemishes, and oversights, and mistakes of other writers; and let the subject treated on be whatever it will, their imaginations are so entirely possessed and replete with the defects of other pens, that the very quintessence of what is bad does of necessity distil into their own, by which means the whole appears to be nothing else but an abstract of the criticisms themselves have made.

I swam as fortune directed me, and

Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.

Arbitrary power is the natural object of temptation to a prince, as wine and women to a young fellow, or a bribe to a judge, or avarice to old age ...

Daphne knows, with equal ease, How to vex and how to please; But the folly of her sex Makes her sole delight to vex.

The various opinions of philosophers have scattered through the world as many plagues of the mind as Pandora's box did those of the body; only with this difference, that they have not left hope at the bottom.

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

Life is a tragedy wherein we sit as spectators for a while and then act our part in it.

I row after health like a waterman ...

An idle reason lessens the weight of the good ones you gave before.

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.

So that, upon the whole, there must be some kind of subjection due from every man to every man, which cannot be made void by any power, pre-eminence, or authority whatsoever.

Sweeping from butcher's stalls, dung, guts, and blood,
Drown'd puppies, stinking sprats, all drench'd in mud,
Dead cats, and turnip-tops, come tumbling down the flood.

In all distresses of our friends We first consult our private ends; While Nature, kindly bent to ease us, Points out some circumstance to please us.

Three kings protested to me, that in their whole reigns they never did once prefer any person of merit, unless by mistake, or treachery of some minister in whom they confided; neither would they do it if they were to live again: and they showed, with great strength of reason, that the royal throne could not be supported without corruption, because that positive, confident, restive temper, which virtue infused into a man, was a perpetual clog to public business.

No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore, money is better than counsel.

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 of wit or sublime.

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.

I am of the level with common Astrologers; who, with an old paltry cant, and a few pot-hooks for planets to amuse the vulgar, have too long been suffered to abuse the world.

Jonathan Swift (November 30, 1667 – October 19, 1745) was an Irish cleric, satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for Whigs then for Tories), and poet, famous for works like Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, The Drapier's Letters, The Battle of the Books, and A Tale of a Tub. Swift is probably the foremost prose satirist in the English language, although he is less well known for his poetry. Swift published all of his works under pseudonyms - such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M.B. Drapier - or anonymously. He is also known for being a master of 2 styles of satire; the Horatian and Juvenalian styles. Source: Wikipedia

The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides, While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides.

whereof one was a page that held up his train, and

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.

For want of a block, man will stumble at a straw.

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.

I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.

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.

I shall be like that tree-I shall die at the top.

You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday

When a man of genius appears in the world, it is immediately recognized by the fact that all the blockheads join forces against him.

For in that universal call,
Few bankers will to heaven be mounters;
They'll cry, Ye shops, upon us fall!
Conceal and cover us, ye counters!
When other hands the scales shall hold,
And they, in men's and angels' sight
Produced with all their bills and gold,
'Weigh'd in the balance and found light!'

Tis nothing when you are used to it.

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.

Caesar freely confessed to me, that the greatest actions of his own life were not equal, by many degrees, to the glory of taking it away.

Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone.

Take a strict view of their excrements, and, from the colour, the odour, the taste, the consistence, the crudeness or maturity of digestion, form a judgment of their thoughts and designs; because men are never so serious, thoughtful, and intent, as when they are at stool ...

My master likewise mentioned another Quality which his Servants had discovered in several Yahoos, and to him was wholly unaccountable. He said, a Fancy would sometimes take a Yahoo, to retire into a Corner, to lie down and howl, and groan, and spurn away all that came near him, although he were young and fat, wanted neither Food nor Water; nor did the Servants imagine what could possibly ail him. And the only Remedy they found was to set him to hard Work, after which he would infallibly come to himself. To this I was silent out of Partiality to my own Kind; yet here I could plainly discover the true Seeds of Spleen, which only seizeth on the Lazy, the Luxurious, and the Rich; who, if they were forced to undergo the same Regimen I would undertake for the Cure.

Leagues, till we were able to work no longer, being already spent with labour while we were in the ship.

Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.

Atlas, we read in ancient song, Was so exceeding tall and strong, He bore the skies upon his back, Just as the pedler does his pack; But, as the pedler overpress'd Unloads upon a stall to rest, Or, when he can no longer stand, Desires a friend to lend a hand, So Atlas, lest the ponderous spheres Should sink, and fall about his ears, Got Hercules to bear the pile, That he might sit and rest awhile.

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

The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk.

Lord, Madame, I have fed like a farmer; I shall grow as fat as a porpoise.

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.

Don't set your wit against a child.

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.

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.

Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.

I remember it was with extreme difficulty that I could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word opinion, or how a point could be disputable; because reason taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain; and beyond our knowledge we cannot do either.

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.

The worthiest people are the most injured by slander, as is the best fruit which the birds have been pecking at.

He likewise directed, that every senator in the great council of a nation, after he had delivered his opinion, and argued in the defence of it, should be obliged to give his vote directly contrary; because if that were done, the result would infallibly terminate in the good of the public.

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.

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

Common fluency of speech in many men and most women is owing to a scarcity of matter.

Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.

Vision is seeing the invisible.

Walls have tongues, and hedges ears.

An intelligent person should put money in the beginning, but not in heart

Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.

An atheist has got one point beyond the devil.

It is remarkable with what Christian fortitude and resignation we can bear the suffering of other folks.

Come hither, all ye empty things,
Ye bubbles rais'd by breath of Kings;
Who float upon the tide of state,
Come hither, and behold your fate.
Let pride be taught by this rebuke,
How very mean a thing's a Duke;
From all his ill-got honours flung,
Turn'd to that dirt from whence he sprung.

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.

One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.

Say, Britain, could you ever boast, Three poets in an age at most? Our chilling climate hardly bears A sprig of bays in fifty years.

Whoe'er excels in what we prize,
Appears a hero in our eyes;
Each girl, when pleased with what is taught,
Will have the teacher in her thought.
...
A blockhead with melodious voice,
In boarding-schools may have his choice.

Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind reception it meets with in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.

Undoubtedly, philosophers are in the right when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.

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

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.

I was in the utmost astonishment, and roared so loud that they all ran back in a fright; and some of them, as I was afterwards told, were hurt with the falls they got by leaping from my sides upon the ground. However, they soon returned,

There is no quality so contrary to any nature which one cannot affect, and put on upon occasion, in order to serve an interest.

A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious and low.

asked me, "what were the usual causes or motives that made one country go to war with another?" I answered "they were innumerable; but I should only mention a few of the chief. Sometimes the ambition of princes, who never think they have land or people enough to govern; sometimes the corruption of ministers, who engage their master in a war, in order to stifle or divert the clamour of the subjects against their evil administration.