Quotes from Jonathan Swift

This is every cook's opinion - no savory dish without an onion, but lest your kissing should be spoiled your onions must be fully boiled.

She pays him in his own coin.

Conversation is but carving!Give no more to every guestThan he's able to digest.Give him always of the prime,And but little at a time.Carve to all but just enough,Let them neither starve nor stuff,And that you may have your due,Let your neighbor carve for you.

If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.

He [the Emperor] is taller by almost the breadth of my nail, than any of his court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into the beholders.

For, what though his Head be empty, provided his Common place-Book be full...

A lie is an excuse guarded.

He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers.

Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.

Proper words in proper places, make the true definition of a style.

She looks as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

May my enemies live here [London] in summer!

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.

A set of phrases learnt by rote;A passion for a scarlet coat;When at a play to laugh, or cry,Yet cannot tell the reason why:Never to hold her tongue a minute;While all she prates has nothing in it.

Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.

Lord, I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing!

'Tis as cheap sitting as standing.

Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.

Indeed, madam, your ladyship is very sparing of your tea: I protest, the last I took was no more than water bewitch'd.

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.

Instead of dirt and poison we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax; thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.

...have the same Use with Burning-Glasses, to collect the diffus'd Rays of Wit and Learning in Authors, and make them point with Warmth and Quickness upon the Reader's Imagination.

I thought you and he had been hand-and-glove.

I shall be like that tree, I shall die at the top.