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 Quote
A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
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 Quote
As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
Books, the children of the brain.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
Don't set your wit against a child.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
Every dog must have his day.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
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 Quote
He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
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 Quote
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 Quote
I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
May you live all the days of your life.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
No wise man ever wished to be younger.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
Observation is an old man's memory.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
Principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
The want of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
There is nothing in this world constant but inconstancy.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
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 Quote
Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
Where there are large powers with little ambition... nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes.
- Jonathan Swift Quote
