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With a whirl of thought oppressedI sink from reverie to rest.An horrid vision seized my head,I saw the graves give up their dead. By Jonathan Swift

Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs,Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs. By Jonathan Swift

All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain and languor; it's like spending this year part of next year's revenue. By Jonathan Swift

It is an uncontrolled truth, that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them. By Jonathan Swift

Many a truth is told in jest. By 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. By Jonathan Swift

Everyone desires long life, not one old age. By Jonathan Swift

If the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots I would burn my [Gulliver's] Travels. By Jonathan Swift

I love good creditable acquaintance; I love to be the worst of the company. By Jonathan Swift

All disgracers of the press in prose and verse condemned to eat nothing but their own cotton, and quench their thirst with their own ink. By Jonathan Swift

My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool. By Jonathan Swift

Oh how our neighbour lifts his nose,To tell what every schoolboy knows. By Jonathan Swift

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

You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place. By Jonathan Swift

Love of flattery, in most men, proceeds from the mean opinion they have of themselves; in women, from the contrary. By Jonathan Swift

A fig for your bill of fare; show me your bill of company. By Jonathan Swift

When we are old, our friends find it difficult to please us, and are less concerned whether we be pleased or not. By Jonathan Swift

It is very unfair in any writer to employ ignorance and malice together, because it gives his answerer double work. By Jonathan Swift

We have chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax; thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light. By Jonathan Swift

My hunger serves me instead of a clock. By Jonathan Swift

To acknowledge you were wrong yesterday is simply to let the world know that you are wiser today than you were then. By Jonathan Swift

The example alone of a vicious prince will corrupt an age; but that of a good one will not reform it. By Jonathan Swift

We of this age have discovered a shorter, and more prudent method to become scholars and wits, without the fatigue of reading or of thinking. By Jonathan Swift

Polite Conversation Why, everyone one as they like; as the good woman said when she kissed her cow. By Jonathan Swift

The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking. By Jonathan Swift

Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events. By Jonathan Swift

It may pass for a maxim in State, that the administration cannot be placed in too few hands, nor the legislature in too many. By Jonathan Swift

Words are the clothing of our thoughts. By Jonathan Swift

Great abilities, when employed as God directs, do but make the owners of them greater and more painful servants to their neighbors. By Jonathan Swift

Under the rose, since here are none but friends, To own the truth we have some private ends. By Jonathan Swift

When a man is made a spiritual peer he loses his surname; when a temporal, his Christian name. By Jonathan Swift

Just get the right syllable in the proper place. By Jonathan Swift

What poet would not grieve to seeHis brother write as well as he?But rather than they should excel,He'd wish his rivals all in Hell. By Jonathan Swift

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. By Jonathan Swift

Strange an astrologer should die, without one wonder in the sky. By Jonathan Swift

Principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth. By Jonathan Swift

A poor spirit is poorer than a poor purse. A very few pounds a year would ease a man of the scandal of avarice. By Jonathan Swift

Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it. By Jonathan Swift

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room. By Jonathan Swift

Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company. By Jonathan Swift

Small causes are sufficient to make a man uneasy, when great ones are not in the way: for want of a block he will stumble at a straw. By Jonathan Swift

Lord, Madame, I have fed like a farmer; I shall grow as fat as a porpoise. By Jonathan Swift

Venus, a beautiful, good-natured lady, was the goddess of love; Juno, a terrible shrew, the goddess of marriage: and they were always mortal enemies. By Jonathan Swift

Tis nothing when you are used to it. By Jonathan Swift

No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience. By Jonathan Swift

Your onions should be thoroughly boiled. By Jonathan Swift

Poor Nations are hungry, and rich Nations are proud, and Pride and Hunger will ever be at Variance. By Jonathan Swift

If a lump of soot falls into the soup and you cannot conveniently get it out, stir it well in and it will give the soup a French taste. By Jonathan Swift

The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word. By 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? By Jonathan Swift

When a man of genius appears in the world, it is immediately recognized by the fact that all the blockheads join forces against him. By Jonathan Swift

Ale is meat, drink and cloth; it will make a cat speak and a wise man dumb. By Jonathan Swift

By the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your country you are and ought to be as free a people as your brethren in England. By Jonathan Swift

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

For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery. By Jonathan Swift

The worthiest people are the most injured by slander, as is the best fruit which the birds have been pecking at. By Jonathan Swift

I would rather be a freeman among slaves than a slave among freemen. By Jonathan Swift

Some dire misfortune to portend, no enemy can match a friend. By Jonathan Swift

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. By Jonathan Swift

Brisk talkers are generally slow thinkers. By Jonathan Swift

Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken. By Jonathan Swift

The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier. By Jonathan Swift

Good manners is the art of making people comfortable. Whoever makes the fewest people uncomfortable has the best manners. By Jonathan Swift

Caesar freely confessed to me, that the greatest actions of his own life were not equal, by many degrees, to the glory of taking it away. By Jonathan Swift

You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. By Jonathan Swift

When dunces are satiric, I take it for a panegyric. By Jonathan Swift

I'll give you leave to call me anything, if you don't call me spade. By Jonathan Swift

Bachelor's fare: bread and cheese, and kisses. By Jonathan Swift

Though Diogenes lived in a tub, there might be, for aught I know, as much pride under his rags, as in the fine-spun garments of the divine Plato. By Jonathan Swift

So endless and exorbitant are the desires of men that they will grasp at all, and can form no scheme of perfect happiness with less. By Jonathan Swift

Pray steal me not, I'm Mrs. Dingley's, Whose heart in this four-footed thing lies. By Jonathan Swift

Orators inflame the people, whose anger is really but a short fit of madness. By Jonathan Swift

An English tongue, if refined to a certain standard, might perhaps be fixed forever. By Jonathan Swift

I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world. By Jonathan Swift

She watches him as a cat would watch a mouse. By Jonathan Swift

Complaint is the largest tribute heaven receives and the sincerest part of our devotion. By Jonathan Swift

Big-endians and small-endians. By Jonathan Swift

'T is 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. By Jonathan Swift

There is no vice which humankind carries to such wild extremes as that of avarice. By Jonathan Swift

As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold. By Jonathan Swift

Patience alleviates, as impatience augments, pain; thus persons of strong will suffer less than those who give way to irritation. By Jonathan Swift

Brutes find out where their talents lie; a bear will not attempt to fly. By 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. By Jonathan Swift

A nice man is a man of nasty ideas. By Jonathan Swift

Apollo was held the god of physic and sender of disease. Both were originally the same trade, and still continue. By Jonathan Swift

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

Every age might perhaps produce one or two geniuses, if they were not sunk under the censure and obloquy of plodding, servile, imitating pedants. By Jonathan Swift

Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent. By Jonathan Swift

111 company is like a dog, who dirts those most whom he loves best. By Jonathan Swift

Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting. By Jonathan Swift

A fig for partridges and quails, ye dainties I know nothing of ye; But on the highest mount in Wales Would choose in peace to drink my coffee. By Jonathan Swift

All human race would be wits. And millions miss, for one that hits. By 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. By Jonathan Swift

Some men, under the notion of weeding out prejudice, eradicate virtue, honesty and religion. By Jonathan Swift

Say, Britain, could you ever boast, Three poets in an age at most? Our chilling climate hardly bears A sprig of bays in fifty years. By Jonathan Swift

It is remarkable with what Christian fortitude and resignation we can bear the suffering of other folks. By Jonathan Swift

So, naturalists observe, a flea; Hath smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum. By Jonathan Swift

I forget whether advice be among the lost things which Ariosto says are to be found in the moon: that and time ought to have been there. By Jonathan Swift

Do you think I was born in a wood to be afraid of an owl? By Jonathan Swift

An atheist has got one point beyond the devil. By Jonathan Swift

All panegyrics are mingled with an infusion of poppy. By Jonathan Swift

Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time. By Jonathan Swift

Men who possess all the advantages of life are in a state where there are many accidents to disorder and discompose, but few to please them. By Jonathan Swift

Common fluency of speech in many men and most women is owing to a scarcity of matter. By Jonathan Swift

I cannot imagine why we should be at the expense to furnish wit for succeeding ages, when the former have made no sort of provision for ours. By Jonathan Swift

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. By Jonathan Swift

Silks, velvets, calicoes, and the whole lexicon of female fopperies. By Jonathan Swift

Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired By Jonathan Swift

Ah, a German and a genius ! A prodigy, admit him ! By Jonathan Swift

Hobbes clearly proves, that every creature Lives in a state of war by nature. By Jonathan Swift

Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off. By Jonathan Swift

The ruin of a State is generally preceded by an universal degeneracy of manners and contempt of religion. By Jonathan Swift

Fine words! I wonder where you stole them. By Jonathan Swift

There is no quality so contrary to any nature which one cannot affect, and put on upon occasion, in order to serve an interest. By Jonathan Swift

It often happens that, if a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done its work, and there is no further occasion for it. By Jonathan Swift

Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension. By Jonathan Swift

Rebukes are easy from our betters, From men of quality and letters;But when low dunces will affront,What man alive can stand the brunt? By Jonathan Swift

There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency. By Jonathan Swift

He that calls a man ungrateful sums up all the veil that a man can be guilty of. By Jonathan Swift

I shall be like that tree-I shall die at the top. By Jonathan Swift

Quotations are best brought in to confirm some opinion controverted. By Jonathan Swift

whereof one was a page that held up his train, and By Jonathan Swift

Ever eating, never cloying, All-devouring, all-destroying Never finding full repast, Till I eat the world at last. By Jonathan Swift

Real vision is the ability to see the invisible. By Jonathan Swift

No wise man ever wished to be younger. By Jonathan Swift

Besides, I now considered myself as bound by the laws of hospitality, to a people who had treated me with so much expense and magnificence. By Jonathan Swift

The system of morality to be gathered from the ancient sages falls very short of that delivered in the gospel. By Jonathan Swift

God hath intended our passions to prevail over reason. By Jonathan Swift

Faith, that's as well said as if I had said it myself. By Jonathan Swift

Let a man be ne'er so wise, he may be caught with sober lies. By Jonathan Swift

Cruel people are ever cowards in emergency. By Jonathan Swift

A secret is seldom safe in more than one breast. By Jonathan Swift

Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed. By Jonathan Swift

truth, justice, temperance, and By Jonathan Swift

Old sciences are unraveled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot. By Jonathan Swift

Proper words in proper places make the true definition of style. By Jonathan Swift

The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style. By Jonathan Swift

A stander-by may sometimes, perhaps, see more of the game than he that plays it. By Jonathan Swift

There seems to be no part of knowledge in fewer hands than that of discerning when to have done. By Jonathan Swift

For though, in nature, depth and height Are equally held infinite: In poetry, the height we know; 'Tis only infinite below. By Jonathan Swift

I winked at my own littleness, as people do at their own faults. By Jonathan Swift

Men of wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays. By Jonathan Swift

May you live every day of your life. By Jonathan Swift

When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me. By Jonathan Swift

Happiness is the perpetual possession of being well deceived. By Jonathan Swift

If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time. By Jonathan Swift

Of so little weight are the greatest services to princes, when put into the balance with a refusal to gratify their passions. By Jonathan Swift

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

It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom. By Jonathan Swift

Pedantry is properly the over-rating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to. By Jonathan Swift

A ridiculous passion which hath no being but in play-books and romances. By Jonathan Swift

The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk. By Jonathan Swift

One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good. By Jonathan Swift

Everybody wants to live forever, but nobody wants to grow old. By Jonathan Swift

Life is a tragedy wherein we sit as spectators for a while and then act our part in it. By Jonathan Swift

Hail fellow, well met. By Jonathan Swift

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 ... By Jonathan Swift

The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides, While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides. By Jonathan Swift

How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice when they will not so much as take warning. By Jonathan Swift

Religion seems to have grown an infant with age, and requires miracles to nurse it, as it had in its infancy. By Jonathan Swift

The scholars of Ireland seem not to have the least conception of style, but run on in a flat phraseology, often mingled with barbarous terms. By Jonathan Swift

Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical. By Jonathan Swift

I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning. By Jonathan Swift

that Providence never intended to make the management of public affairs a mystery to be comprehended only by a few persons of sublime genius, of By Jonathan Swift

I have always a sacred veneration for anyone I observe to be a little out of repair in his person, as supposing him either a poet or a philosopher. By Jonathan Swift

Blot out, correct, insert, refine, enlarge, diminish, interline. Be mindful, when invention fails. To scratch your head and bite your nails. By Jonathan Swift

If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches. By Jonathan Swift

Such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up. By Jonathan Swift

T is as cheap sitting as standing. By Jonathan Swift

There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake. By Jonathan Swift

I won't quarrel with my bread and butter. By Jonathan Swift

Men always grow vicious before they become unbelievers. By Jonathan Swift

Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding. By Jonathan Swift

Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection. By Jonathan Swift

and the first words I learnt, were to express my desire "that he would please give me my liberty;" which I every day repeated on my knees. His By Jonathan Swift

You must take the will for the deed. By Jonathan Swift

He was a bold man that first ate an oyster. By Jonathan Swift

Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath. By Jonathan Swift

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. By Jonathan Swift

Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters. By Jonathan Swift

The sight of you is good for sore eyes. By Jonathan Swift

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible. By Jonathan Swift

Conversation is but carving! Give no more to every guest Than he's able to digest. By Jonathan Swift

The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit. By Jonathan Swift

Truth shines the brighter clad in verse. By Jonathan Swift

You cannot reason a person out of something they were not reasoned into. By Jonathan Swift

That incessant envy wherewith the common rate of mankind pursues all superior natures to their own. By Jonathan Swift

Satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any. By Jonathan Swift

Undoubtedly, philosophers are in the right when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison. By Jonathan Swift

War: that mad game the world so loves to play. By Jonathan Swift

For, what though his Head be empty, provided his Common place-Book be full ... By Jonathan Swift

There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy. By Jonathan Swift

Nothing is so great an instance of ill-manners as flattery. By Jonathan Swift

Flattery is the worst and falsest way of showing our esteem. By Jonathan Swift

She 's no chicken; she 's on the wrong side of thirty, if she be a day. By Jonathan Swift

Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others. By Jonathan Swift

What some people invent the rest enlarge. By Jonathan Swift

I know Sir John will go, though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs. By Jonathan Swift

I love white Portugal wine better than claret, champagne, or burgundy. I have a sad vulgar appetite. By Jonathan Swift

Leagues, till we were able to work no longer, being already spent with labour while we were in the ship. By Jonathan Swift

Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone. By Jonathan Swift

By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty. By Jonathan Swift

Polite Conversation 'Tis happy for him, that his father was before him. By Jonathan Swift

It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not. By Jonathan Swift

It is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they are employed on as when they have lost their edge. By Jonathan Swift

A favor is half granted, when graciously refused. By Jonathan Swift

There's none so blind as they that won't see. By Jonathan Swift

Usually speaking, the worst-bred person in company is a young traveller just returned from abroad. By Jonathan Swift

Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe, how much it altered her person for the worse. By Jonathan Swift

Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind. By Jonathan Swift

You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday By Jonathan Swift

She has more goodness in her little finger than he has in his whole body. By Jonathan Swift

A wife should be always a reasonable and agreeable companion, because she cannot always be young. By Jonathan Swift

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

Nothing more unqualified the man to act with prudence than a misfortune that is attended with shame and guilt. By Jonathan Swift

A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart. By Jonathan Swift

Tell truth, and shame the devil. By Jonathan Swift

I swam as fortune directed me, and By Jonathan Swift

One principal object of good-breeding is to suit our behaviour to the three several degrees of men, our superiors, our equals, and those below us. By Jonathan Swift

There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails. By Jonathan Swift

Flattery is the worst and fastest way of showing our esteem By Jonathan Swift

Arbitrary power is the natural object of temptation to a prince, as wine and women to a young fellow, or a bribe to a judge, or avarice to old age ... By Jonathan Swift

A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart. By Jonathan Swift

She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork. By Jonathan Swift

In all distresses of our friends We first consult our private ends; While Nature, kindly bent to ease us, Points out some circumstance to please us. By Jonathan Swift

Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly. By Jonathan Swift

Physicians ought not to give their judgment of religion, for the same reason that butchers are not admitted to be jurors upon life and death. By Jonathan Swift

The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclined men in the course of virtue, but seldom or ever reclaims the vicious. By Jonathan Swift

So geographers, in Africa maps, With savage pictures fill their gaps, And o'er uninhabitable downs Place elephants for want of towns By Jonathan Swift

When I am in danger of bursting, I will go and whisper among the reeds. By Jonathan Swift

From not the gravest of Divines,Accept for once some serious Lines. By Jonathan Swift

We have an intuitive sense of our duty. By Jonathan Swift

Praise is the daughter of present power. By Jonathan Swift

Perverseness is your whole defence. By Jonathan Swift

He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue. By Jonathan Swift

A chuck under the chin is worth two kisses. By Jonathan Swift

Two friendships in two breasts requires The same aversions and desires. By Jonathan Swift

Live every day as your last, because one of these days, it will be. By Jonathan Swift

Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride. By Jonathan Swift

Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as in books it is generally the worst sort of reading. By Jonathan Swift

A wise man will find us to be rogues by our faces. By Jonathan Swift

Frequently exercised in my sight, to accustom themselves to me. By Jonathan Swift

They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives. By Jonathan Swift

Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want. By 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. By Jonathan Swift

Argument is the worst sort of conversation. By Jonathan Swift

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

When the world has once begun to use us ill, it afterwards continues the same treatment with less scruple or ceremony, as men do to a whore. By Jonathan Swift

The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little. By Jonathan Swift

And, is not Virtue in MankindThe Nutriment that feeds the Mind? By Jonathan Swift

"Lawyers Are": Those whose interests and abilities lie in perverting, confounding and eluding the law. By Jonathan Swift

The more careless, the more modish. By Jonathan Swift

A maxim in law has more weight in the world than an article of faith. By Jonathan Swift

A pleasant companion is as good as a coach. By Jonathan Swift

THE AUTHOR GIVES SOME ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF AND FAMILY: By Jonathan Swift

Punning is a talent which no man affects to despise but he that is without it. By Jonathan Swift

Daphne knows, with equal ease, How to vex and how to please; But the folly of her sex Makes her sole delight to vex. By Jonathan Swift

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed. By Jonathan Swift

A carpenter is known by his chips. By Jonathan Swift

Books, the children of the brain. By Jonathan Swift

Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions. By Jonathan Swift

For want of a block, man will stumble at a straw. By Jonathan Swift

I never knew any man cured of inattention. By Jonathan Swift

Possession, they say, is eleven points of the law. By Jonathan Swift

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through. By Jonathan Swift

Better belly burst than good liquor be lost. By Jonathan Swift

But as human happiness is of a very short duration, so in those days were human fashions upon which it entirely depends. By Jonathan Swift

Surely mortal man is a broomstick! By Jonathan Swift

A wise man is never less alone than when he is alone. By Jonathan Swift

When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings. By Jonathan Swift

I must complain the cards are ill shuffled till I have a good hand. By Jonathan Swift

There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them. By Jonathan Swift

I row after health like a waterman ... By Jonathan Swift

There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say. By Jonathan Swift

An intelligent person should put money in the beginning, but not in heart By Jonathan Swift

It is as hard to satirize well a man of distinguished vices, as to praise well a man of distinguished virtues. By Jonathan Swift

The affectation of some late authors to introduce and multiply cant words is the most ruinous corruption in any language. By Jonathan Swift

Books, like men their authors, have no more than one way of coming into the world, but there are ten thousand to go out of it, and return no more. By Jonathan Swift

In oratory the greatest art is to hide art. By Jonathan Swift

Don't set your wit against a child. By Jonathan Swift

Unjustly poets we asperse: Truth shines the brighter clad in verse, And all the fictions they pursue Do but insinuate what is true. By Jonathan Swift

It is the talent of human nature to run from one extreme to another. By Jonathan Swift

What religion is he of?Why, he is an Anythingarian. By Jonathan Swift

Every dog must have his day. By Jonathan Swift

A lie is an excuse guarded By Jonathan Swift

Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age. By Jonathan Swift

When a real genius appeares in this world, you'll know him by the fact that all the fools have allied against him. By Jonathan Swift

A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention, by false speaking, to deceive and injure your neighbour. By Jonathan Swift

If you were not reasoned into your beliefs, you cannot be reasoned out of them. By Jonathan Swift

Arbitrary power is but the first natural step from anarchy, or the savage life. By Jonathan Swift

The chameleon, who is said to feed upon nothing but air, has of all animals the nimblest tongue. By Jonathan Swift

Vanity is a natural object of temptation to a woman. By Jonathan Swift

It is a miserable thing to live in suspense; it is the life of the spider. By Jonathan Swift

...I hid myself between two leaves of sorrel, and there discharged the necessities of nature. By Jonathan Swift

Ay, do despise me, I'm the prouder for it; I like to be despised. By Jonathan Swift

Observation is an old man's memory. By Jonathan Swift

Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old. By Jonathan Swift

Walls have tongues, and hedges ears. By Jonathan Swift

We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same. By Jonathan Swift

My father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the Third of five Sons. By Jonathan Swift

That his majesty gave many marks of his great lenity, often By Jonathan Swift

Though fear should lend him pinions like the wind, yet swifter fate will seize him from behind. By Jonathan Swift

An excuse is a lie guarded. By Jonathan Swift

Hail, follow, well met, All dirty and wet: Find out, if you can, Who's master, who's man. By Jonathan Swift

An idle reason lessens the weight of the good ones you gave before. By Jonathan Swift

Opium is not so stupefying to many persons as an afternoon sermon. By Jonathan Swift

The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman. By Jonathan Swift

What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly. By Jonathan Swift

Vision is seeing the invisible. By Jonathan Swift

I could not sufficiently wonder at the intrepidity of these diminutive mortals, who By Jonathan Swift

Philosophy! the lumber of the schools. By Jonathan Swift

Come, agree, the law's costly. By Jonathan Swift

A soldier is a "Yahoo" hired to kill in cold blood as many of his own Species, who have never offended him, as possibly he can. By Jonathan Swift

Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age. By Jonathan Swift

Bread is the staff of life. By Jonathan Swift

No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore, money is better than counsel. By Jonathan Swift

A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle. By Jonathan Swift

In men desire begets love, and in women love begets desire. By Jonathan Swift

A college joke to cure the dumps. By Jonathan Swift

Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent. By Jonathan Swift

Kitchen Physic is the best Physic. By Jonathan Swift

The atheists, libertines, despisers of religion ... that is to say all those who usually pass under the name of Free-thinkers. By Jonathan Swift

I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing. By Jonathan Swift

If a lie be believed only for an hour, it hath done its work. By Jonathan Swift

This wine should be eaten, it is too good to be drunk. By Jonathan Swift

Few are qualified to shine in company, but it is in most men's power to be agreeable. By Jonathan Swift