Quotes by Jonathan Swift

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

— Jonathan Swift

Wisdom

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

— Jonathan Swift

Love

May you live all the days of your life.

— Jonathan Swift

Life

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.

— Jonathan Swift

Wisdom

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

Wisdom

We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

— Jonathan Swift

Love

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

Truth

It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.

— Jonathan Swift

Wisdom

Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.

— Jonathan Swift

Wisdom

He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.

— Jonathan Swift

Wisdom

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.

— Jonathan Swift

Wisdom

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

— Jonathan Swift

Wisdom

The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.

— Jonathan Swift

Success

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

Wisdom

When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.

— Jonathan Swift

Wisdom

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.

— Jonathan Swift

Wisdom

For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.

— Jonathan Swift

Wisdom

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

Wisdom

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

Wisdom

There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.

— Jonathan Swift

Life

A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.

— Jonathan Swift

Wisdom

The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.

— Jonathan Swift

Life

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

Courage

Observation is an old man's memory.

— Jonathan Swift

Wisdom