Best 366 quotes of Jonathan Swift on MyQuotes

111 company is like a dog, who dirts those most whom he loves best.

Abstracts, abridgments, summaries, etc., have the same use with burning-glasses,--to collect the diffused light rays of wit and learning in authors, and make them point with warmth and quickness upon the reader's imagination.

A carpenter is known by his chips.

A Child will make two Dishes at an Entertainment for Friends; and when the Family dines alone, the fore or hind Quarter will makea reasonable Dish; and seasoned with a little Pepper or Salt, will be very good Boiled on the fourth Day, especially in Winter.

A chuck under the chin is worth two kisses.

A college joke to cure the dumps.

A fig for partridges and quails, ye dainties I know nothing of ye; But on the highest mount in Wales Would choose in peace to drink my coffee.

A footman may swear; but he cannot swear like a lord. He can swear as often: but can he swear with equal delicacy, propriety, and judgment?

A forward critic often dupes us With sham quotations peri hupsos, And if we have not read Longinus, Will magisterially outshine us. Then, lest with Greek he over-run ye, Procure the book for love or money, Translated from Boileau's translation, And quote quotation on quotation.

Ah, a German and a genius ! A prodigy, admit him !

A jargon form'd from the lost language, wit, Confounded in that Babel of the pit; Form'd by diseased conceptions, weak and wild, Sick lust of souls, and an abortive child; Born between whores and fops, by lewd compacts, Before the play, or else between the acts; Nor wonder, if from such polluted minds Should spring such short and transitory kinds.

Ale is meat, drink and cloth; it will make a cat speak and a wise man dumb.

A lie is an excuse guarded

A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention, by false speaking, to deceive and injure your neighbour.

A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious and low.

All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor; it is like spending this year part of the next year's revenue.

All human race would be wits. And millions miss, for one that hits.

All panegyrics are mingled with an infusion of poppy.

All Pretences of foretelling by Astrology, are Deceits; for this manifest Reason, because the Wise and Learned, who can only judge whether there be any Truth in this Science, do all unanimously agree to laugh at and despise it; and none but the poor ignorant Vulgar give it any Credit.

Although the devil be the father of lies, he seems, like other great inventors, to have lost much of his reputation by the continual improvements that have been made upon him.

A maxim in law has more weight in the world than an article of faith.

An atheist has got one point beyond the devil.

And he gave it for his opinion, "that whoever 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.

An idle reason lessens the weight of the good ones you gave before.

And surely one of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish had been left unsaid.

An English tongue, if refined to a certain standard, might perhaps be fixed forever.

An excuse is a lie guarded.

A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.

An intelligent person should put money in the beginning, but not in heart

A pleasant companion is as good as a coach.

Apollo was held the god of physic and sender of disease. Both were originally the same trade, and still continue.

A prince, the moment he is crown'd, Inherits every virtue sound, As emblems of the sovereign power, Like other baubles in the Tower: Is generous, valiant, just, and wise, And so continues till he dies.

Arbitrary power is but the first natural step from anarchy, or the savage life.

Arbitrary power is the natural object of temptation to a prince, as wine and women to a young fellow, or a bribe to a judge, or avarice to old age.

Argument is the worst sort of conversation.

Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.

A ridiculous passion which hath no being but in play-books and romances.

A secret is seldom safe in more than one breast.

A stander-by may sometimes, perhaps, see more of the game than he that plays it.

A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.

Atlas, we read in ancient song, Was so exceeding tall and strong, He bore the skies upon his back, Just as the pedler does his pack; But, as the pedler overpress'd Unloads upon a stall to rest, Or, when he can no longer stand, Desires a friend to lend a hand, So Atlas, lest the ponderous spheres Should sink, and fall about his ears, Got Hercules to bear the pile, That he might sit and rest awhile.

A traveler's chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad-as well as good example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.

A true critic, in the perusal of a book, is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones.

A wise man will find us to be rogues by our faces.

Bachelor's fare: bread and cheese, and kisses.

Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.

Blot out, correct, insert, refine, enlarge, diminish, interline. Be mindful, when invention fails. To scratch your head and bite your nails.

Books, like men their authors, have no more than one wayofcoming intothe world, but there areten thousand to go out of it, and return no more.

Books, the children of the brain.

Bread is the staff of life.