Jonathan Swift Quotes

Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.

Jonathan Swift

Vain men delight in telling what Honours have been done them, what great Company they have kept, and the like; by which they plainly confess, that these Honours were more than their Due, and such as their Friends would not believe if they had not been told: Whereas a Man truly proud, thinks the greatest Honours below his Merit, and consequently scorns to boast. I therefore deliver it as a Maxim that whoever desires the Character of a proud Man, ought to conceal his Vanity.

Jonathan Swift

Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect.

Jonathan Swift

You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday

Jonathan Swift

We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

Jonathan Swift

When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.

Jonathan Swift

That incessant envy wherewith the common rate of mankind pursues all superior natures to their own.

Jonathan Swift

Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone.

Jonathan Swift

There is no vice which humankind carries to such wild extremes as that of avarice.

Jonathan Swift

When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.

Jonathan Swift

Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.

Jonathan Swift

Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.

Jonathan Swift

The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.

Jonathan Swift

There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.

Jonathan Swift

War: that mad game the world so loves to play.

Jonathan Swift

What vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me, although I am not so old in proportion to them as I formerly was: which I can prove by arithmetic, for then I was double their age, which now I am not. Letter to Alexander Pope. 7 Feb. 1736.

Jonathan Swift

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.

Jonathan Swift

It is the talent of human nature to run from one extreme to another.

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

Cruel people are ever cowards in emergency.

Jonathan Swift