Jonathan Swift Quotes

• I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.

  Jonathan Swift

• 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.

  Jonathan Swift

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

  Jonathan Swift

• Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.

  Jonathan Swift

• He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.

  Jonathan Swift

• 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.

  Jonathan Swift

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

  Jonathan Swift

• Every dog must have his day.

  Jonathan Swift

• Don’t set your wit against a child.

  Jonathan Swift

• Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.

  Jonathan Swift

• Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.

  Jonathan Swift

• As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.

  Jonathan Swift

• 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.

  Jonathan Swift

• A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.

  Jonathan Swift

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

  Jonathan Swift

• 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.

  Jonathan Swift

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

  Jonathan Swift

  Topics in Money

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

  Jonathan Swift

  Topics in Age

• When men grow virtuous in their old age, they are merely making a sacrifice to God of the Devil’s leavings.

  Jonathan Swift

  Topics in Age

• Proper words in proper places, make the true definition of a style.

  Jonathan Swift

  Tags in Writers And Writing

Jonathan Swift (125)

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

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