Jonathan Swift

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love, one another.
Jonathan Swift - Miscellanies, 1711
Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping.

One of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish had been left unsaid.
Jonathan Swift - Thoughts on Various Subjects
When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

May you live all the days of your life.

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
Jonathan Swift - Thoughts on Various Subjects
When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.

He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.

I row after health like a waterman...

Happiness is the perpetual possession of being well deceived.

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

As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.

I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.

The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
Jonathan Swift - "A Modest Proposal"
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled, and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout.

When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him.
Jonathan Swift - A Critical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind (1709)
There is nothing in this world constant, but inconsistancy.

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.

Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

We have enough religion to hate each other, but not enough to love each other.

- Jonathan Swift