Jonathan Swift

“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.”

“Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.”

“The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.”

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

“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: like a man, who hath thought of a good repartee when the discourse is changed, or the company parted; or like a physician, who hath found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.”

“When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.”

“I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.”

“Books, the children of the brain.”

“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.”

“Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.”

“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.”

“Instead of dirt and poison we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax; thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.”

“There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake, though all the World sees them to be in downright nonsense.”

“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…”

“The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.”

“'Tis very warm weather when one's in bed.”

“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: like a man, who hath thought of a good repartee when the discourse is changed, or the company parted; or like a physician, who hath found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.”

“We are so fond of one another, because our ailments are the same.”

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

“I love good creditable acquaintance; I love to be the worst of the company.”

“…one enemy can do more hurt, than ten friends can do good.”

“May you live all the days of your life.”

“But nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches, as to conceive how others can be in want.”

“'Tis an old maxim in the schools,Will condescend to take a bit.”

“Proper words in proper places, make the true definition of a style.”

“Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired...”

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

“So weak thou art, that fools thy power despise;And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise.”

“For, in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery: but in fact, eleven men well armed will certainly subdue one single man in his shirt.”

“Libertas et natale solum:Fine words! I wonder where you stole 'em.”

“A set of phrases learnt by rote;While all she prates has nothing in it.”

“For conversation well endued;Will tell aloud your greatest failing.”

“Those dreams that on the silent night intrude,And fools consult interpreters in vain.”

“This evil fortune, which generally attends extraordinary men in the management of great affairs, has been imputed to divers causes, that need not be here set down, when so obvious a one occurs, if what a certain writer observes be true, that when a great genius appears in the world the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”

“Not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.”

“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.”

“A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.”

“Yet malice never was his aim;Who call it humor when they gibe.”

“Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible.”

“Then gave him some familiar Thumps,A College Joke to cure the Dumps.”

“Conversation is but carving!Let your neighbor carve for you.”

“Under an oak, in stormy weather,Can put this rogue and whore asunder.”

“Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy is the best bred in the company.”

“Pedantry is properly the over-rating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to.”

“Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.”

“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.”

“Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.”

“Nothing is so great an instance of ill manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; if you flatter only one or two, you affront the rest.”

“It is impossible that any thing so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.”

“I shall be like that tree; I shall die from the top.”

“Reason is a very light rider and easily shook off.”

“I 've often wish'd that I had clear,Of land set out to plant a wood.”

“How we apples swim!”

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

“Seamen have a custom, when they meet a whale, to fling him out an empty tub by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the ship.”

“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 or wit of sublime.”

“Bread is the staff of life.”

“Books, the children of the brain.”

“As boys do sparrows, with flinging salt upon their tails.”

“He made it a part of his religion never to say grace to his meat.”

“Laws are like Cobwebs which may catch small Flies, but let Wasps and Hornets break through. But in Oratory the greatest Art is to hide Art.”

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

“Every man desires to live long, but no man would be old.”

“A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.”

“What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not we are told expressly: that they neither marry, nor are given in marriage.”

“May you live every day of your life.”

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

“The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable; for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.”

“The latter part of a wise man’s life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former.”

“Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and orators, because he that would obtrude his thoughts and reasons upon a multitude, will convince others the more, as he appears convinced himself.”

“Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions, and consequently of no use to a good king or a good ministry; for which reason Courts are so overrun with politics.”

“Men are contented to be laughed at for their wit, but not for their folly.”

“Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps as 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.”

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

“The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.”

“Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.”

“Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age…”

“I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.”

“A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.”

“No wise man ever wished to be younger.”

“The Bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.”

“Complaint is the largest tribute heaven receives, and the sincerest part of our devotion.”

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

“He is taller by almost the breadth of my nail, than any of his court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into the beholders.”

“I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.”

“And he gave it for his opinion, that whosoever 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.”

“He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers.”

“I said the thing which was not. (For they have no word in their language to express lying or falsehood.)”

“Poor Nations are hungry, and rich Nations are proud, and Pride and Hunger will ever be at Variance.”

“As learned commentators viewIn Homer more than Homer knew.”

“So geographers, in Afric maps,Place elephants for want of towns.”

“Where Young must torture his inventionTo flatter knaves, or lose his pension.”

“Hobbes clearly proves that every creatureLives in a state of war by nature.”

“So, naturalists observe, a fleaIs bit by him that comes behind.”

“A penny for your thoughts.”

“Do you think I was born in a wood to be afraid of an owl?”

“The sight of you is good for sore eyes.”

“'Tis as cheap sitting as standing.”

“I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world.”

“I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.”

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

“She's no chicken; she's on the wrong side of thirty, if she be a day.”

“She looks as if butter wou'dn't melt in her mouth.”

“If it had been a bear it would have bit you.”

“She wears her clothes, as if they were thrown on her with a pitchfork.”

“Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.”

“Lord M. What religion is he of?Lord Sp. Why, he is an Anythingarian.”

“He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.”

“That's as well said, as if I had said it myself.”

“You must take the will for the deed.”

“She has more goodness in her little finger, than he has in his whole body.”

“Lord, I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing!”

“They say a carpenter's known by his chips.”

“The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.”

“I'll give you leave to call me anything, if you don't call me "spade".”

“Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.”

“May you live all the days of your life.”

“For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.”

“I have fed like a farmer: I shall grow as fat as a porpoise.”

“I always love to begin a journey on Sundays, because I shall have the prayers of the church to preserve all that travel by land, or water.”

“I know Sir John will go, though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs.”

“I thought you and he were hand-in-glove.”

“Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.”

“'T is happy for him that his father was before him.”

“There is none so blind as they that won't see.”

“She watches him as a cat would watch a mouse.”

“She pays him in his own coin.”

“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.”

“There was all the world and his wife.”

“He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.”

“Sharp's the word with her.”

“There's two words to that bargain.”

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