Skip to content
Jonathan Swift
Quotes by Jonathan Swift
Quotes 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.”
Jonathan Swift
“May you live all the days of your life.”
Jonathan Swift
“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.”
Jonathan Swift
“Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”
Jonathan Swift
“For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.”
Jonathan Swift
“A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.”
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.”
Jonathan Swift
“We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”
Jonathan Swift
“Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.”
Jonathan Swift
“Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.”
Jonathan Swift
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.”
Jonathan Swift
“A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying... that he is wiser today than yesterday.”
Jonathan Swift
“Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.”
Jonathan Swift
“Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.”
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.”
Jonathan Swift
“Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.”
Jonathan Swift
“Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.”
Jonathan Swift
“One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.”
Jonathan Swift
“There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.”
Jonathan Swift
“A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.”
Jonathan Swift
“Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.”
Jonathan Swift
“I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.”
Jonathan Swift
“Books, the children of the brain.”
Jonathan Swift
“No wise man ever wished to be younger.”
Jonathan Swift
“There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.”
Jonathan Swift
“He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.”
Jonathan Swift
“Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.”
Jonathan Swift
“Don't set your wit against a child.”
Jonathan Swift
“Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.”
Jonathan Swift
“Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.”
Jonathan Swift
