Quotes and Quotations

Memorable Quotes and quotations from Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift Irish essayist, novelist, & satirist (1667 - 1745)


Jonathan Swift -
- We have enough religion to hate each other, but not enough to love each other.

Jonathan Swift -
- It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.

Jonathan Swift -
- As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.

Jonathan Swift -
- It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.

Jonathan Swift -
- When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

Jonathan Swift - A Critical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind (1709)
- There is nothing in this world constant, but inconsistancy.

Jonathan Swift -
- No wise man ever wished to be younger.

Jonathan Swift -
- I row after health like a waterman...

Jonathan Swift -
- Happiness is the perpetual possession of being well deceived.

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

Jonathan Swift - Thoughts on Various Subjects
- When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

Jonathan Swift -
- The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.

Jonathan Swift - "A Modest Proposal"
- I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled, and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout.

Jonathan Swift -
- We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love, one another.

Jonathan Swift -
- He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.

Jonathan Swift - Miscellanies, 1711
- Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping.

Jonathan Swift -
- May you live all the days of your life.

Jonathan Swift -
- One of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish had been left unsaid.

Jonathan Swift -
- When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him.

Jonathan Swift -
- I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.

Jonathan Swift -
- Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.

Jonathan Swift - Thoughts on Various Subjects
- When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.