Quotes from Jonathan Swift

Don't set your wit against a child.

Everyone desires long life, not one old age.

Life is a tragedy wherein we sit as spectators for a while and then act our part in it.

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

A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.

Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.

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

There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.

Physicians ought not to give their judgment of religion, for the same reason that butchers are not admitted to be jurors upon life and death.

Men who possess all the advantages of life are in a state where there are many accidents to disorder and discompose, but few to please them.

Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.

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

Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.

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.

Ever eating, never cloying, All-devouring, all-destroying Never finding full repast, Till I eat the world at last.

I forget whether advice be among the lost things which Ariosto says are to be found in the moon: that and time ought to have been there.

Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.

Time is painted with a lock before, and bald behind, signifying thereby that we must take time by the forelock; for, when it is once past, there is no recalling it.

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

Vision is the art of seeing the invisible.

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

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.

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.

There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.