Quotes by Jonathan Swift

Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.

Where there are large powers with little ambition... nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes.

Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.

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

No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.

Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.

I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.

When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.

Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.

Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.

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

I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.

The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.

Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.

Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.

Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.

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

Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.

For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.

A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.