Top 438 Quotes & Sayings by Jonathan Swift - Page 7

Bread is the staff of life.

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

Lose no time to contradict her, Nor endeavor to convict her; Only take this rule along, Always to advise her wrong, And reprove her when she's right; She may then grow wise for spite.

Orators inflame the people, whose anger is really but a short fit of madness.

Flattery is the worst and falsest way of showing our esteem.

She has more goodness in her little finger than he has in his whole body.

If the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my Travels.

Pedantry is properly the over-rating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to.

Say, Britain, could you ever boast, Three poets in an age at most? Our chilling climate hardly bears A sprig of bays in fifty years.

There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them.

A carpenter is known by his chips.

A fig for your bill of fare; show me your bill of company.

A poor spirit is poorer than a poor purse. A very few pounds a year would ease a man of the scandal of avarice.

She watches him as a cat would watch a mouse.

Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe, how much it altered her person for the worse.

The best Maxim I know in this life is, to drink your Coffee when you can, and when you cannot, to be easy without it. While you continue to be splenetic, count upon it I will always preach. Thus much I sympathize with you that I am not cheerful enough to write, for I believe Coffee once a week is necessary to that.

I am of the level with common Astrologers; who, with an old paltry cant, and a few pot-hooks for planets to amuse the vulgar, have too long been suffered to abuse the world.

Nor do they trust their tongue alone, but speak a language of their own; can read a nod, a shrug, a look, far better than a printed book; convey a libel in a frown, and wink a reputation down.

I'm up and down and round about, Yet all the world can't find me out; Though hundreds have employed their leisure, They never yet could find my measure.

Careful observers may foretell the hour (By sure prognostics) when to dread a show'r. While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more.

The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides, While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides.

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.

I forget whether advice be among the lost things which Ariosto says are to be found in the moon: that and time ought to have been there.

Big-endians and small-endians.

There are but three ways for a man to revenge himself of the censure of the world,--to despise it, to return the like, or to endeavor to live so as to avoid it; the first of these is usually pretended, the last is almost impossible, the universal practice is for the second.

Two women seldom grow intimate but at the expense of a third person.

I'll give you leave to call me anything, if you don't call me spade.

Whatever the poets pretend, it is plain they give immortality to none but themselves; it is Homer and Virgil we reverence and admire, not Achilles or Aeneas. With historians it is quite the contrary; our thoughts are taken up with the actions, persons, and events we read, and we little regard the authors.

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

If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.

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

I remember it was with extreme difficulty that I could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word opinion, or how a point could be disputable; because reason taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain; and beyond our knowledge we cannot do either.

It is an uncontrolled truth, that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them.

Not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.

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.

Every age might perhaps produce one or two geniuses, if they were not sunk under the censure and obloquy of plodding, servile, imitating pedants.

You must take the will for the deed.

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

Nothing is so great an instance of ill-manners as flattery.

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

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.

Liberty of conscience is nowadays only understood to be the liberty of believing what men please, but also of endeavoring to propagate that belief as much as they can.

Tell truth, and shame the devil.

Everybody wants to live forever, but nobody wants to grow old.

For poetry, he's past his prime, He takes an hour to find a rhyme; His fire is out, his wit decayed, His fancy sunk, his muse a jade. I'd have him throw away his pen, But there's no talking to some men.

Venus, a beautiful, good-natured lady, was the goddess of love; Juno, a terrible shrew, the goddess of marriage: and they were always mortal enemies.

Oh how our neighbour lifts his nose, To tell what every schoolboy knows.

Such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up.

It is very unfair in any writer to employ ignorance and malice together, because it gives his answerer double work.

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

I shall be like that tree-I shall die at the top.

Great abilities, when employed as God directs, do but make the owners of them greater and more painful servants to their neighbors.

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

Let a man be ne'er so wise, he may be caught with sober lies.

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.

If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.

My Lawyer being practiced almost from his Cradle in defending Falsehood; is quite out of his Element when he would be an Advocate for Justice, which as an Office unnatural, he always attempts with great Awkwardness if not with Ill-will.

Story-telling is subject to two unavoidable defects,--frequent repetition and being soon exhausted; so that, whoever values this gift in himself, has need of a good memory, and ought frequently to shift his company.

The example alone of a vicious prince will corrupt an age; but that of a good one will not reform it.

Fond of those hives where folly reigns, And cards and scandal are the chains, Where the pert virgin slights a name, And scorns to redden into shame.