Jonathan Swift Quotes

Do you think I was born in a wood to be afraid of an owl?

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

Happiness is the perpetual possession of being well deceived.

I remember it was with extreme difficulty that I could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word opinion, or how a point could be disputable; because reason taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain; and beyond our knowledge we cannot do either.

Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind reception it meets with in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.

It is impossible that any thing so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.

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.

Truth shines the brighter clad in verse.

I should perhaps like others have astonished you with strange improbable tales; but I rather chose to relate plain matter of fact in the simplest manner and style; because my principal design was to inform you, and not to amuse you.

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

There was all the world and his wife.

The empress, and young princes of the blood of both sexes, attended by many ladies, sat at some distance in their chairs; but

The emperor, and all his court, came out to meet us; but his great officers would by no means suffer his majesty to endanger his person by mounting on my body.

They say a carpenter's known by his chips.

You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday