Jonathan Swift Quotes

Men are contented to be laughed at for their wit, but not for their folly.

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

the caprices of womankind are not limited by any climate or nation, and that they are much more uniform, than can be easily imagined.

They have a notion, that when people are met together, a short silence does much improve conversation: this I found to be true; for during those little intermissions of talk, new ideas would arise in their minds, which very much enlivened the discourse.

Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions, and consequently of no use to a good king or a good ministry; for which reason Courts are so overrun with politics.

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

She pays him in his own coin.

Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.

I have fed like a farmer: I shall grow as fat as a porpoise.

regard to good morals than to great abilities; for, since government is necessary to mankind, they believe, that the common size of human understanding is fitted to some station or other; and that Providence never intended to make the management of public affairs a mystery to be comprehended only by a few persons of sublime

For, in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery: but in fact, eleven men well armed will certainly subdue one single man in his shirt.

A humour of reading books, except those of devotion or housewifery, is apt to turn a woman's brain... All affectation of knowledge beyond what is merely domestic, renders them vain, conceited and pretending.

I always love to begin a journey on Sundays, because I shall have the prayers of the church to preserve all that travel by land, or water.

petition to be excused from the said service, upon pretence of unwillingness to force the consciences, or destroy the liberties and lives of an innocent people.

Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age…