Quotes from Jonathan Swift

Nothing more unqualified the man to act with prudence than a misfortune that is attended with shame and guilt.

In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man uncapable of holding any public station; for, since kings avow themselves to be the deputies of Providence.

Punning is a talent which no man affects to despise but he that is without it.

He that calls a man ungrateful sums up all the veil that a man can be guilty of.

There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them.

Let a man be ne'er so wise, he may be caught with sober lies.

A poor spirit is poorer than a poor purse. A very few pounds a year would ease a man of the scandal of avarice.

Principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.

This made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavor to do himself honor among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him.

For to enter the palace of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms, therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back-door

The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word.

No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore, money is better than counsel.

Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired

Few are qualified to shine in company, but it is in most men's power to be agreeable.

A traveler's chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad-as well as good example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.

Books, like men their authors, have no more than one wayofcoming intothe world, but there areten thousand to go out of it, and return no more.

Dignity, high station, or great riches, are in some sort necessary to old men, in order to keep the younger at a distance, who are otherwise too apt to insult them upon the score of their age.

An intelligent person should put money in the beginning, but not in heart

I cannot but conclude that the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.

It is the talent of human nature to run from one extreme to another.

By the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your country you are and ought to be as free a people as your brethren in England.

hoever wishes to win in this game must have patience and money, since the values are so little constant and the rumors so little founded on truth Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.

Patience alleviates, as impatience augments, pain; thus persons of strong will suffer less than those who give way to irritation.

A fig for partridges and quails, ye dainties I know nothing of ye; But on the highest mount in Wales Would choose in peace to drink my coffee.