Jonathan Swift Quotes

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

"Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age."

"When men grow virtuous in their old age, they are merely making a sacrifice to God of the Devil's leavings"

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

"May you live all the days of your life."

"A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart."

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

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

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

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

"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."

"Where there are large powers with little ambition... nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes."

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

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

"Complaint is the largest tribute Heaven receives."

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

"Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as in books it is generally the worst sort of reading"

"Argument is the worst sort of conversation."

"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."

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