Jonathan Swift quotes
Jonathan Swift (1667–1745): Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist. The library holds 154 quotes by Jonathan Swift, drawn from Polite Conversation. Dialogue, Tale of a Tub, Thoughts on Various Subjects and other works. The 60 below are the most quoted; search the library in the maker for the rest.
Often about: humour, faith, time, love, character, knowledge
The best-known Jonathan Swift quotes
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’Tis an old maxim in the schools, That flattery’s the food of fools; Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit.
Cadenus and Vanessa -
Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
Thoughts on Various Subjects -
The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.
Thoughts on Various Subjects -
So, naturalists observe, a flea Has smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller still to bite ’em; And so proceed ad infinitum.
Poetry, a Rhapsody -
Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination.
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Seamen have a custom, when they meet a whale, to fling him out an empty tub by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the ship.
Tale of a Tub, Preface -
He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers.
Gulliver’s Travels, Part iii. Chap. v. Voyage to Laputa -
A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.
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Fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.
Polite Conversation. Dialogue ii -
Hobbes clearly proves that every creature Lives in a state of war by nature.
Poetry, a Rhapsody -
There is none so blind as they that won’t see.
Polite Conversation. Dialogue iii -
She watches him as a cat would watch a mouse.
Polite Conversation. Dialogue iii -
Convey a libel in a frown, And wink a reputation down!
Journal of a Modern Lady -
The sight of you is good for sore eyes.
Polite Conversation. Dialogue i -
One of the best rules in conversation is, never say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish we had left unsaid.
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I know Sir John will go, though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs.
Polite Conversation. Dialogue ii -
What has been, may be; and what may be, may be supposed to be.
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The coin that is most current among mankind is flattery; the only benefit of which is that by hearing what we are not we may be instructed what we ought to be.
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I’ll give you leave to call me anything, if you don’t call me “spade.”
Polite Conversation. Dialogue ii -
As love without esteem is capricious and volatile, esteem without love is languid and cold.
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A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious, and low.
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The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
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The affectation of some late authors to introduce and multiply cant words is the most ruinous corruption in any language.
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Pedantry is properly overrating any kind of knowledge we pretend to.
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To call a man ungrateful is to sum up all the evil he can be guilty of.
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I would rather be a freeman among slaves than a slave among freemen.
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Nothing is so great an instance of ill-manners as flattery.
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I never saw, heard, or read that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country.
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One principal part of good breeding is to suit our behavior to the three several degrees of men: our superiors, our equals, and those below us.
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Whoever can make two ears of corn or two blades of grass grow where only one grew before, deserves better of mankind, and does more service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
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Reason itself is true and just, but the reason of every particular man is weak and wavering.
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He made it a part of his religion never to say grace to his meat.
Tale of a Tub, Sect. xi -
It is with narrow-soul’d people as with narrow-neck’d bottles; the less they have in them the more noise they make in pouring it out.
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She has more goodness in her little finger than he has in his whole body.
Polite Conversation. Dialogue ii -
She’s no chicken; she’s on the wrong side of thirty, if she be a day.
Polite Conversation. Dialogue i -
Digressions in a book are like foreign troops in a state, which argue the nation to want a heart and hands of its own; and often either subdue the natives, or drive them into the most unfruitful corners.
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Love is a bottomless pit; it is a cormorant—a harpy that devours everything.
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If a man should register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning, etc., beginning from his youth, and so go on to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last.
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Common distress is a great promoter both of friendship and speculation.
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Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation; as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.
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It is not so much the being exempt from faults, as the having overcome them, that is an advantage to us.
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Proper words in proper places make the true definition of a style.
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The man truly proud thinks honours below his merit, and scorns to boast.
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We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love, one another.
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The tell-tale out of school is of all wits the greatest fool.
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Nothing is so great an instance of ill-manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; if you flatter only one or two, you affront the rest.
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If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.
Letter to Miss Vanbromrigh, Aug. 12, 1720 -
Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and orators, because whoever would obtrude his thoughts and reasons upon a multitude, win convince others the more as he appears convinced himself.
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Usually speaking, the worst-bred person in company is a young traveler just returned from abroad.
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Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy is the best bred in the company.
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The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.
Polite Conversation. Dialogue ii -
Complaint is the largest tribute heaven receives, and the sincerest part of our devotion.
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Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them.
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No wild beast more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate.
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Violent zeal for truth has a hundred to one odds to be either petulancy, ambition, or pride.
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Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse.
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Men are contented to be laughed at for their wit, but not for their folly.
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Power is no blessing in itself, but when it is employed to protect the innocent.
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When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
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How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice, when they will not so much as take warning.
Where these quotes come from
- Polite Conversation. Dialogue (26 quotes)
- Tale of a Tub (5 quotes)
- Thoughts on Various Subjects (3 quotes)
- Poetry, a Rhapsody (3 quotes)
- Cadenus and Vanessa (2 quotes)
- Gulliver’s Travels (2 quotes)
- Imitation of Horace (2 quotes)
- Journal of a Modern Lady (1 quote)
Every quote comes from a public-domain edition. How the library was made .