Jonathan Swift Quotes

"I've always believed no matter how many shots I miss, I'm going to make the next one."

"She wears her clothes as if they are thrown on with a pitchfork"

"A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in w"

"One of the very best rules of conversation is to never, say anything which any of the company wish had been left unsaid."

"He was a bold man that first eat an oyster."

"Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretenses to foretell events"

"Pretense is the overrating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to."

"What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not we are told expressly"

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

"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."

"Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind."

"Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are an imitation of fighting"

"How is it possible to expect mankind to take advice when they will not so much as take warning?"

"For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labor, and search, and ranging through every corner of nature; the difference is that instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light."

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

"Happiness is a perpetual possession of being well deceived."

"All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor; it is like spending this year part of the next year's revenues"

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

"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."

"Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others."