Jonathan Swift Quotes

As boys do sparrows, with flinging salt upon their tails.

She wears her clothes, as if they were thrown on her with a pitchfork.

it. He called it his oracle, and said, it pointed out the time for every action of his life.

Where Young must torture his invention
To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.

ALL Rivers go to the Sea, but none return from it. Xerxes wept when he beheld his Army, to consider that in less than a Hundred Years they would be all Dead. Anacreon was' Choakt with a Grape-stone, and violent Joy Kills as well as violent Grief. There is nothing in this World constant but Inconstancy; yet Plato thought that if Virtue would appear to the World in her own native Dress, all Men would be Enamoured with her. But now since Interest governs the World, and Men neglect the Golden Mean, Jupiter himself, if he came on the Earth would be Despised, unless it were as he did to Danae in a Golden Shower. For Men nowadays Worship the Rising Sun, and not the Setting.

Quand un vrai génie apparaît en ce bas monde, on peut le reconnaitre à ce signe que les imbéciles sont tous ligués contre lui.

When a great office is vacant, either by death or disgrace (which often happens,) five or six of those candidates petition the emperor to entertain his majesty and the court with a dance on the rope; and whoever jumps the highest, without falling, succeeds in the office.

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

There's none so blind as they that won't see.

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

As learned commentators view
In Homer more than Homer knew.

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy is the best bred in the company.

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.

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.

I'll give you leave to call me anything, if you don't call me "spade".