Jonathan Swift Quotes

The sight of you is good for sore eyes.

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

A penny for your thoughts.

So, naturalists observe, a flea
Hath smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bit 'em;
And so proceed ad infinitum.
Thus every poet, in his kind,
Is bit by him that comes behind.

Hobbes clearly proves that every creature
Lives in a state of war by nature.

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

So geographers, in Afric maps,
With savage pictures fill their gaps,
And o'er unhabitable downs
Place elephants for want of towns.

As learned commentators view
In Homer more than Homer knew.

It is a maxim among lawyers that whatever hath been done before may be done again, and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities to justify the most iniquitous opinions, and the judges never fail of directing them accordingly.

I said the thing which was not. (For they have no word in their language to express lying or falsehood.)

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.

And he gave it for his opinion, that whosoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.

I cannot but conclude 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.

He is taller by almost the breadth of my nail, than any of his court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into the beholders.

The two maxims of any great man at court are always to keep his countenance and never to keep his word.