Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

Quotes

• I row after health like a waterman...

• 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.

• He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.

• I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.

• When a true genius appears in this world you may know him by this sign, that the dines are all in confederacy against him.

• Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping.

• A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.

• 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.

• It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.

• The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.

• When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

• Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.

• We have enough religion to hate each other, but not enough to love each other.

• Happiness is the perpetual possession of being well deceived.

• 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.

• When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him.

• We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love, one another.

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

• No wise man ever wished to be younger.

• May you live all the days of your life.