Jonathan Swift

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.
There is nothing in this world constant, but inconsistancy.
We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
May you live every day of your life.