Jonathan Swift Quotes

• These Mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to beg Sustenance for their helpless Infants; who, as they grow up either turn Thieves for want of Work; or leave their dear native country, to fight for the Pretender in Spain; or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.

  Jonathan Swift

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• Hail fellow, well met, All dirty and wet: Find out, if you can, Who’s master, who’s man.

  Jonathan Swift

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• Walls have tongues, and hedges ears.

  Jonathan Swift

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• How haughtily he lifts his nose, To tell what every schoolboy knows.

  Jonathan Swift

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• Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason; their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.

  Jonathan Swift

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• A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.

  Jonathan Swift

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• Few are qualified to shine in company; but it is in most men’s power to be agreeable.

  Jonathan Swift

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• I told him…that we ate when we were not hungry, and drank without the provocation of thirst.

  Jonathan Swift

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• He replied that I must needs be mistaken, or that I said the thing which was not. (For they have no word in their language to express lying or falsehood.)

  Jonathan Swift

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• He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sun-beams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers.

  Jonathan Swift

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• 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.

  Jonathan Swift

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• 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.

  Jonathan Swift

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• It is alleged indeed, that the high heels are most agreeable to our ancient constitution: but however this be, his Majesty hath determined to make use of only low heels in the administration of the government.

  Jonathan Swift

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• 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.

  Jonathan Swift

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• In Church your grandsire cut his throat; To do the job too long he tarried, He should have had my hearty vote, To cut his throat before he married.

  Jonathan Swift

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• I have heard of a man who had a mind to sell his house, and therefore carried a piece of brick in his pocket, which he shewed as a pattern to encourage purchasers.

  Jonathan Swift

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• We were to do more business after dinner, but after dinner is after dinner – an old saying and a true, ‘much drinking, little thinking’.

  Jonathan Swift

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• The reason why so few marriages are happy, is, because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.

  Jonathan Swift

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• What they do in heaven we are ignorant of: what they do not we are told expressly, that they neither marry, nor are given in marriage.

  Jonathan Swift

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• He showed me his bill of fare to tempt me to dine with him; poh, said I, I value not your bill of fare, give me your bill of company.

  Jonathan Swift

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Jonathan Swift (125)

Birth:	30th November, 1667
Death:	19th October, 1745
Nationality:	Angolan, Irish
Profession:	Essayist, Poet, Politician, Satirist

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