Authors:

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z

Jonathan Swift Quotes - Page 11

All Quotes Abuse Age Art Atheism Belief Character Children Church Coffee Cooking Corruption Country Criticism Desire Devil Eating Education Evil Fate Flattery Food Friends Friendship Funny Genius Giving Gold Greatness Greed Happiness Hate Heart Heaven House Inspirational Joy Judging Justice Kissing Language Life Literature Love Lying Madness Mankind Manners Mathematics Money Moon Pain Passion Philosophy Poetry Politics Praise Pride Quality Rain Reading Religion Romance Running Sarcasm Satire School Science Shame Style Success Talent Time Understanding Virtue Vision War Wine Wisdom Writing

Modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.

Modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.

Men, May, Fool

Jonathan Swift (1843). “Works: Containing Interesting and Valuable Papers Not Hitherto Published”, p.836

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

Freedom, Slave, Freeman

Jonathan Swift, Thomas Sheridan (1813). “The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift...”, p.102

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

Order, Quality, Deceit

Jonathan Swift (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Jonathan Swift (Illustrated)”, p.1080, Delphi Classics

For, if we take an examination of what is generally understood by happiness, as it has respect either to the understanding or the senses, we shall find all its properties and adjuncts will herd under this short definition: that it is a perpetual possession of being well deceived.

Happiness, Possession, Deceived

"A Modest Proposal and Other Prose".

That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.

Criticism, Opinion, Passages

Satires and Personal Writings Thoughts on Various Subjects

Rhetoric in serious discourses is like the flowers in corn; pleasing to those who come only for amusement, but prejudicial to him who would reap profit from it.

Flower, Amusement, Corn

When you set about your composing, it may be necessary for your ease, and better distillation of wit, to put on your worst clothes, and the worse the better; for an author, like a limbeck, will yield the better for having a rag about him: besides that, I have observed a gardener cut the outward rind of a tree (which is the surtout of it) to make it bear well; and this is a natural account of the usual poverty of poets, and is an argument why wits, of all men living, ought to be ill clad.

Cutting, Men, Clothes

Jonathan Swift (1812). “The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, D.D. ...: With Notes, Historical and Critical”, p.73

Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them; as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like a face on the wall or the wainscot can, by two or three touches with a lead pencil, make it look visible, and agreeing with what he fancied.

Wall, Real, Reflection

Jonathan Swift, Thomas Sheridan, John Nichols (1808). “The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, D.D. ...: With Notes, Historical and Critical”, p.304

I have heard of a man who had a mind to sell his house, and therefore carried a piece of brick in his pocket, which he shewed as a pattern to encourage purchasers.

Home, Men, House

'The Drapier's Letters' (1724) no. 2 (4 August 1724)

Neither is it safe to count upon the weakness of any man's understanding, who is thoroughly possessed of the spirit of revenge to sharpen his invention.

Revenge, Men, Understanding

Jonathan Swift (1741). “The Works of Jonathan Swift ...: Containing, I. His Miscellanies in prose. II. His poetical writings. III. The travels of Capt. Lemuel Gulliver. IV. Papers relating to Ireland, and The Drapier's letters. V. The conduct of the allies, and The examiners. VI. The publick spirit of the Whiggs, &c. with Polite conversation. VII. Letters to and from Dr. Swift. VIII. Directions to servants, sermons, poems, &c”, p.125

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.

Country, Common Sense, Religion

'Thoughts on Religion' (1765)

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.

Kings, Ministry, Use

Jonathan Swift (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Jonathan Swift (Illustrated)”, p.898, Delphi Classics

If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning etc., beginning from his youth, and so go to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last.

Love, Learning, Men

Jonathan Swift (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Jonathan Swift (Illustrated)”, p.895, Delphi Classics

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

Class, Titles, Firsts

Jonathan Swift (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Jonathan Swift (Illustrated)”, p.16, Delphi Classics

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.

Prayer, Sunday, Journey

'Polite Conversation' (1738) dialogue 2

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

Conceited, Well Said, Wells

'Polite Conversation' (1738) dialogue 2

Nature has left every man a capacity of being agreeable, though not of shining in company; and there are a hundred men sufficiently qualified for both who, by a very few faults, that they might correct in half an hour, are not so much as tolerable.

Men, Shining, Might

Jonathan Swift (1841). “The Works. Containing Interesting and Valuable Papers, Not Hitherto Published. With Memoir of the Author, by Thomas Roscoe”, p.293

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

Fall, Sage, Morality

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

Sides, Thirty, Chickens

Jonathan Swift, Thomas Sheridan, John Nichols (1801). “Poems, Polite convesation, etc”, p.296

I hope you will be ready to own publicly, whenever you shall be called to it, that by your great and frequent urgency you prevailed on me to publish a very loose and uncorrect account of my travels, with directions to hire some young gentleman of either university to put them in order, and correct the style, as my cousin Dampier did, by my advice, in his book called "A Voyage round the world."

Cousin, Book, Order

Jonathan Swift (2015). “Gulliver's Travels”, p.4, Xist Publishing

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.

Men, Suits, Degrees

This single Stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected Corner, I once knew in a flourishing State in a Forest: It was full of Sap, full of Leaves, and full of Boughs: But now, in vain does the busy Art of Man pretend to vie with Nature, by tying that withered Bundle of Twigs to its sapless Trunk: It is at best but the Reverse of what it was; a Tree turned upside down, the Branches on the Earth, and the Root in the Air.

Art, Nature, Lying

Jonathan Swift, Thomas Roscoe (1859). “The works of Jonathan Swift, D.D.: with copious notes and additions and a memoir of the author”, p.551

They have likewise discovered two lesser stars, or satellites, which revolve around Mars, whereof the innermost is distant from the center of the primary exactly three of his diameters, and the outermost five: the former revolves in the space of ten hours, and the latter in twenty-one and a half, so that the squares of their periodical times are very near in the same proportion with the cubes of their distances from the center of Mars; which evidently shows them to be governed by the same Law of Gravitation that influences the other heavenly bodies.

Stars, Distance, Future

"Gulliver's Travels". Book by Jonathan Swift. Part III: "A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, and Japan". Chapter 3, 1726.

I've often wish'd that I had clear, For life, six hundred pounds a year; A handsome house to lodge a friend; A river at my garden's end; A terrace walk, and half a rood Of land set out to plant a wood.

Life, Garden, Years

'Imitation of Horace' (1714).

In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.

Art, Oratory, Public Speaking

Jonathan Swift, Thomas Sheridan, John Nichols (1801). “The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, D.D., Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin”, p.8

You May Also Like: