100 Quotes by Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift, an Irish satirist and essayist, is known for his sharp wit, social commentary, and masterful use of satire in his writings. Born in 1667, Swift's literary legacy is epitomized by his masterpiece "Gulliver's Travels," a satirical novel that humorously explores human nature, politics, and society through the fantastic adventures of Lemuel Gulliver. The novel's imaginative narrative, which takes Gulliver to lands inhabited by tiny Lilliputians and giant Brobdingnagians, among others, serves as a vehicle for Swift's biting critique of European society's flaws and absurdities. Swift's satirical works, such as "A Modest Proposal," where he proposed a controversial solution to Ireland's economic troubles, demonstrated his skill in exposing hypocrisy and highlighting the plight of the downtrodden. His writings often navigated the fine line between humor and condemnation, challenging readers to reflect on their own beliefs and behaviors. Swift's influence on satire and his ability to use humor to address serious social issues continue to inspire writers and thinkers to engage critically with the world around them.
Jonathan Swift Quotes
Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible. (Meaning)
He was a bold man that first ate an oyster. (Meaning)
Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it. (Meaning)
There's none so blind as they that won't see. (Meaning)
Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical. (Meaning)
I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth. (Meaning)
No wise man ever wished to be younger. (Meaning)
You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. (Meaning)
Every dog must have his day. (Meaning)
May you live all the days of your life. (Meaning)
Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken. (Meaning)
Hail fellow, well met. (Meaning)
The two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light. (Meaning)
I won't quarrel with my bread and butter. (Meaning)
Bread is the staff of life. (Meaning)
Tell truth, and shame the devil. (Meaning)
Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible.
That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.
Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday
The sight of you is good for sore eyes.
He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
A wise man will find us to be rogues by our faces.
It is the first rule in oratory that a man must appear such as he would persuade others to be: and that can be accomplished only by the force of his life.
So geographers, in Africa maps, With savage pictures fill their gaps, And o'er uninhabitable downs Place elephants for want of towns
There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.
A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.
Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.
Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect.
Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
May you live all the days of your life.
When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.
Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.
Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
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.
We of this age have discovered a shorter, and more prudent method to become scholars and wits, without the fatigue of reading or of thinking.
War: that mad game the world so loves to play.
I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
There's none so blind as they that won't see.
It is the talent of human nature to run from one extreme to another.
Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it.
I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.
Cruel people are ever cowards in emergency.
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.
You cannot reason a person out of something they were not reasoned into.
No wise man ever wished to be younger.
Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone.
The worthiest people are the most injured by slander, as is the best fruit which the birds have been pecking at.
Hail fellow, well met.
Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.
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.
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.
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.
A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.
Argument is the worst sort of conversation.
Don't set your wit against a child.
Every dog must have his day.
The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.
How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice when they will not so much as take warning.
It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.
Many a truth is told in jest.
A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.
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.
There is no vice which mankind carries to such wild extremes as that of avarice.
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.
Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
The best Maxim I know in this life is, to drink your Coffee when you can, and when you cannot, to be easy without it.
My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.
I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.
One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.
Ay, do despise me, I'm the prouder for it; I like to be despised.
I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world.
Every day is an opportunity to make a new happy ending. May you live all the days of your life.
Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
I never knew any man cured of inattention.
Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.
The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter and a scarcity of words; for whosoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt, in speaking, to hesitate upon the choice of both.
That incessant envy wherewith the common rate of mankind pursues all superior natures to their own.
Live every day as your last, because one of these days, it will be.
The ruin of a State is generally preceded by an universal degeneracy of manners and contempt of religion.
And surely 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.
Vision is seeing the invisible.
If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.
There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.
The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.
We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.
Religion seems to have grown an infant with age, and requires miracles to nurse it, as it had in its infancy.
A lie is an excuse guarded
Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.
I love white Portugal wine better than claret, champagne, or burgundy. I have a sad vulgar appetite.
Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
Party is the madness of many for the gain of a few.
A chuck under the chin is worth two kisses.
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.
Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
It is remarkable with what Christian fortitude and resignation we can bear the suffering of other folks.
Complaint is the largest tribute heaven receives and the sincerest part of our devotion.
Books, the children of the brain.
Brisk talkers are generally slow thinkers.
Patience alleviates, as impatience augments, pain; thus persons of strong will suffer less than those who give way to irritation.
An idle reason lessens the weight of the good ones you gave before.
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.
All panegyrics are mingled with an infusion of poppy.
It is as hard to satirize well a man of distinguished vices, as to praise well a man of distinguished virtues.
In church your grandsire cut his throat; to do the job too long he tarried: he should have had my hearty vote to cut his throat before he married.
Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
Exploding many things under the name of trifles is a very false proof either of wisdom or magnanimity, and a great check to virtuous actions with regard to fame.
It often happens that, if a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done its work, and there is no further occasion for it.
I have known some men possessed of good qualities which were very serviceable to others, but useless to themselves; like a sun-dial on the front of a house, to inform the neighbours and passengers, but not the owner within.
The scholars of Ireland seem not to have the least conception of style, but run on in a flat phraseology, often mingled with barbarous terms.
Have you not observed that there is a lower kind of discretion and regularity, which seldom fails of raising men to the highest station in the court, the church, and the law?
Although the devil be the father of lies, he seems, like other great inventors, to have lost much of his reputation by the continual improvements that have been made upon him.
He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.
Hobbes clearly proves, that every creature Lives in a state of war by nature.
Brutes find out where their talents lie; A bear will not attempt to fly, A foundered horse will oft debate Before he tries a five barred gate. A dog by instinct turns aside Who sees the ditch too deep and wide, But man we find the only creature Who, led by folly, combats nature; Who, when she loudly cries-Forbear! With obstinacy fixes there; And where the genius least inclines, Absurdly bends his whole designs.
She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork.
In men desire begets love, and in women love begets desire.
Some men, under the notion of weeding out prejudice, eradicate virtue, honesty and religion.
I said there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are as slaves.
Brisk talkers are usually slow thinkers. There is, indeed, no wild beast more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate. If you are civil to the voluble they will abuse your patience; if brusque, your character.
For to enter the palace of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms, therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back-door
If you were not reasoned into your beliefs, you cannot be reasoned out of them.
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.
Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.
Conversation is but carving! Give no more to every guest Than he's able to digest.
What some people invent the rest enlarge.
Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.
Blot out, correct, insert, refine, enlarge, diminish, interline. Be mindful, when invention fails. To scratch your head and bite your nails.
I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and all my love is toward individuals.
Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired
A favor is half granted, when graciously refused.
A pleasant companion is as good as a coach.
How often do we contradict the right rules of reason in the whole course of our lives! Reason itself is true and just, but the reason of every particular man is weak and wavering, perpetually swayed and turned by his interests, his passions, and his vices.
Perverseness is your whole defense.
No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore, money is better than counsel.
I love good creditable acquaintance; I love to be the worst of the company.
Tis nothing when you are used to it.
Two friendships in two breasts requires The same aversions and desires.
All human race would be wits. And millions miss, for one that hits.
T is as cheap sitting as standing.
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.
Come, agree, the law's costly.
A true critic, in the perusal of a book, is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones.
A secret is seldom safe in more than one breast.
Who can deny that all men are violent lovers of the truth, when we see them so positive in their errors, which they will maintain out of their zeal for truth, although they contradict themselves every day of their lives.
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.
A ridiculous passion which hath no being but in play-books and romances.
Physicians ought not to give their judgment of religion, for the same reason that butchers are not admitted to be jurors upon life and death.
― Jonathan Swift Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
