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Jonathan Swift Quotes - Page 5

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

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

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

Strong, Pain, Irritation

There is no vice which mankind carries to such wild extremes as that of avarice.

Greed, Vices, Extremes

"The Works. Containing Interesting and Valuable Papers, Not Hitherto Published. With Memoir of the Author, by Thomas Roscoe".

Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.

Pride, Gulliver, Poor Nations

Jonathan Swift (1826). “Gulliver's Travels”

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

Giving, Guests, Able

Jonathan Swift (1860). “The Works of Jonathan Swift ...: With Copious Notes and Additions, and a Memoir of the Author”, p.332

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.

Block, Men, Want

Jonathan Swift, Thomas Roscoe (1859). “The works of Jonathan Swift, D.D.: with copious notes and additions and a memoir of the author”, p.614

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

Nurse, Miracle, Age

Jonathan Swift, Thomas Roscoe (1843). “The Works of Jonathan Swift ...: Containing Interesting and Valuable Papers, Not Hitherto Published ... With Memoir of the Author”, p.304

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

Belief, Ifs

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

Men, Pay, Literature

Jonathan Swift (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Jonathan Swift (Illustrated)”, p.896, Delphi Classics

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.

Children, Food, Years

A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burden to their Parents, or the Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public (1729)

The various opinions of philosophers have scattered through the world as many plagues of the mind as Pandora's box did those of the body; only with this difference, that they have not left hope at the bottom.

Differences, Mind, World

Jonathan Swift (1856). “The Works of Jonathan Swift ...: Containing Interesting and Valuable Papers, Not Hitherto Published ... With Memoir of the Author”, p.285

The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter and a scarcity of words; for whosoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt, in speaking, to hesitate upon the choice of both.

Men, Talking, Ideas

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

Happiness, Success, Heaven

Letter to Miss Vanhomrigh, 12 - 13 Aug. 1720 See Luther 3; Steele 2

A lie is an excuse guarded

Lying, Excuse, Dare

For to enter the palace of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms, therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back-door

Inspirational, Men, Doors

Jonathan Swift (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Jonathan Swift (Illustrated)”, p.72, Delphi Classics

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.

Wine, Judging, Temptation

Jonathan Swift (1861). “The Works of Jonathan Swift ...: With Cop'ous Notes and Additions”, p.612

I have known some men possessed of good qualities which were very serviceable to others, but useless to themselves; like a sun-dial on the front of a house, to inform the neighbours and passengers, but not the owner within.

Men, House, Quality

Jonathan Swift, David Laing Purves (1871). “The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D.: Carefully Selected; with a Biography of the Author”, p.516

Don't set your wit against a child.

Education, Teacher, Children

Jonathan Swift (1803). “The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, D.D. ... : with Notes, Historical and Critical”, p.279

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

Perfection, Simplicity, Style

Jonathan Swift (1861). “The Works of Jonathan Swift ...: With Cop'ous Notes and Additions”, p.310

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

Sarcastic, Sarcasm, Glasses

'The Battle of the Books' (1704) preface

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

Funny, Thinking, Flying

"Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies". Book by Jonathan Swift, 1711-1726.

Judges... are picked out from the most dextrous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy, and having been biased all their lives against truth or equity, are under such a fatal necessity of favoring fraud, perjury and oppression, that I have known several of them to refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty by doing any thing unbecoming their nature in office.

Justice, Judging, Office

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

Gambling, Hands, Complaining

Quoted in Colin Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

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.

Gulliver, Doe, Watches

Real vision is the ability to see the invisible.

Real, Vision, Invisible

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

Pride, Despise, Despised

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