Quotes

“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

“The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.” Jonathan Swift

“A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.” Jonathan Swift

“He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.” Jonathan Swift

“I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.” Jonathan Swift

“My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.” Jonathan Swift

“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.” Jonathan Swift

“As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.” Jonathan Swift

“Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.” Jonathan Swift

“Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.” Jonathan Swift

“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.” Jonathan Swift

“I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.” Jonathan Swift