Top 438 Quotes & Sayings by Jonathan Swift - Page 8

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an Irish writer Jonathan Swift.

Last updated on April 19, 2025.

An excuse is a lie guarded.

Jonathan Swift

I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.

Jonathan Swift

My father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the Third of five Sons.

Jonathan Swift

Dignity, high station, or great riches, are in some sort necessary to old men, in order to keep the younger at a distance, who are otherwise too apt to insult them upon the score of their age.

Jonathan Swift

Though Diogenes lived in a tub, there might be, for aught I know, as much pride under his rags, as in the fine-spun garments of the divine Plato.

Jonathan Swift

Time is painted with a lock before, and bald behind, signifying thereby that we must take time by the forelock; for, when it is once past, there is no recalling it.

Jonathan Swift

Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age.

Jonathan Swift

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?

Jonathan Swift

When dunces are satiric, I take it for a panegyric.

Jonathan Swift

Seamen have a custom, when they meet a whale, to fling him out an empty tub by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the ship.

Jonathan Swift

A college joke to cure the dumps.

Jonathan Swift

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

Jonathan Swift

I used to wonder how a man of birth and spirit could endure to be wholly insignificant and obscure in a foreign country, when he might live with lustre in his own.

Jonathan Swift

And, is not Virtue in Mankind The Nutriment that feeds the Mind?

Jonathan Swift

Satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any.

Jonathan Swift

There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity; nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.

Jonathan Swift