70 Greatest Quotes by Jonathan Swift

Insightful Jonathan Swift Quotes

Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish essayist, satirist, political pamphleteer, poet as well as cleric who became Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin. He was best known for writing Gulliver’s Travels. Below is a list of some of the insightful quotes by Jonathan Swift.

“May you live all the days of your life.” - Jonathan Swift
“A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.” - Jonathan Swift
“I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.” - Jonathan Swift
“Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.” - Jonathan Swift
“Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.” - Jonathan Swift
“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.” - Jonathan Swift
“It was a bold person that first ate an oyster.” - Jonathan Swift
“Faith! he must make his stories shorter or change his comrades once a quarter.” - Jonathan Swift
“Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.” - Jonathan Swift
“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.” - Jonathan Swift
“Promises and pie crusts are made to be broken.” - Jonathan Swift
“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.” - Jonathan Swift
“Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches to conceive how others can be in want.” - Jonathan Swift
“There’s none so blind as they that won’t see.” - Jonathan Swift
“As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.” - Jonathan Swift
“It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.” - Jonathan Swift
“The lack of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.” - Jonathan Swift
“The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.” - Jonathan Swift
“A footman may swear; but he cannot swear like a lord. He can swear as often: but can he swear with equal delicacy, propriety, and judgment?” - Jonathan Swift
“If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.” - Jonathan Swift
“He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers.” - Jonathan Swift
“Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.” - Jonathan Swift
“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.” - Jonathan Swift
“Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.” - Jonathan Swift
“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 of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.” - Jonathan Swift
“Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.” - Jonathan Swift
“The most positive men are the most credulous.” - Jonathan Swift
“Style may defined as the proper words in the proper places.” - Jonathan Swift
“Complaint is the largest tribute Heaven receives.” - Jonathan Swift
“But you think that it is time for me to have done with the world, and so I would if I could get into a better before I was called into the best, and not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.” - Jonathan Swift
“The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance and never to keep his work.” - Jonathan Swift
“What some people invent the rest enlarge.” - Jonathan Swift
“One of the very best rules of conversation is to never, say anything which any of the company wish had been left unsaid.” - Jonathan Swift
“Happiness is a perpetual possession of being well deceived.” - Jonathan Swift
“What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.” - Jonathan Swift
“Promises and Pye-Crusts, are made to be broken.” - Jonathan Swift
“As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.” - Jonathan Swift
“I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.” - Jonathan Swift
“O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee, whose graceless children scorn to own thee! . Yet thou hast greater cause to be ashamed of them, than they of thee.” - Jonathan Swift
“It is as hard to satirize well a man of distinguished vices, as to praise well a man of distinguished virtues.” - Jonathan Swift
“Whoever wishes to win in this game must have patience and money, since the values are so little constant and the rumors so little founded on truth Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.” - Jonathan Swift
“Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.” - Jonathan Swift
“I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.” - Jonathan Swift
“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.” - Jonathan Swift
“Two friendships in two breasts requires The same aversions and desires.” - Jonathan Swift
“One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.” - Jonathan Swift
“Pretense is the overrating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to.” - Jonathan Swift
“Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.” - Jonathan Swift
“The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.” - Jonathan Swift
“Observation is an old man’s memory.” - Jonathan Swift
“She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitch folk.” - Jonathan Swift
“No wise man ever wished to be younger.” - Jonathan Swift
“The latter part of a wise person’s life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.” - Jonathan Swift
“Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping.” - Jonathan Swift
“There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.” - Jonathan Swift
“Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as in books it is generally the worst sort of reading.” - Jonathan Swift
“All human race would be wits. And millions miss, for one that hits.” - Jonathan Swift
“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.” - Jonathan Swift
“Don’t set your wit against a child.” - Jonathan Swift
“Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.” - Jonathan Swift
“I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.” - Jonathan Swift
“Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.” - Jonathan Swift
“Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.” - Jonathan Swift
“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.” - Jonathan Swift
“Come, agree, the law’s costly.” - Jonathan Swift
“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.” - Jonathan Swift
“When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.” - Jonathan Swift
“Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.” - Jonathan Swift
“We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.” - Jonathan Swift
“Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.” - Jonathan Swift