Top 15 Jonathan Swift Quotes

May you live every day of your life.

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.

"When a great genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

[Thoughts on Various Subjects]

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

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

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

Books, the children of the brain.

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

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.

He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.

Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect: like a man, who hath thought of a good repartee when the discourse is changed, or the company parted; or like a physician, who hath found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.

I cannot but conclude that the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.

Undoubtedly, philosophers are in the right when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.

Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.

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