Jonathan Swift Quotes
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The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word.
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The want of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.
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The worthiest people are the most injured by slander, as it is the best fruit which the birds have been pecking at.
[Slander]
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There are but three ways for a man to revenge himself for the censure of the world: to despise it; to return the like; or to live so as to avoid it. - The first of these is usually pretended; the last is almost impossible; the universal practice is for the second.
[Censure]
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There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.
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There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake, though all the World sees them to be in downright nonsense.
[Obstinacy]
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There is a pedantry in manners, as in all arts and sciences, and sometimes in trades. Pedantry is properly the overrating any kind of knowledge we pretend to, and if that kind of knowledge be a trifle in itself, the pedantry is the greater.
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There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity; nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.
[Vanity]
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There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.
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There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, and if they were united the world could not stand before them.
[Genius]
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There was all the world and his wife.
[World]
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There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.
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There's none so blind as they that won't see.
[Blindness]
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They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
[Eating]
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Those dreams that on the silent night intrude, and with false flitting shapes our minds delude ... are mere productions of the brain. And fools consult interpreters in vain.
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Though Diogenes lived in a tub, there might have been, for aught I know, as much pride under his rags, as in the fine-spun garments of the divine Plato.
[Pride]
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Time is painted with a lock before, and bald behind, signifying thereby that we must take time by the forelock, for when it is once passed there is no recalling it.
[Time]
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Tis an old maxim in the schools, That flattery's the food of fools - Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit.
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Tis as cheap sitting as standing.
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Tis very warm weather when one's in bed.
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