Jonathan Swift

A pleasant companion is as good as a coach.

— Jonathan Swift

A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.

— Jonathan Swift

Brisk talkers are generally slow thinkers.

— Jonathan Swift

We have an intuitive sense of our duty.

— Jonathan Swift

A college joke to cure the dumps.

— Jonathan Swift

What some people invent the rest enlarge.

— Jonathan Swift

May you live every day of your life.

— Jonathan Swift

Books, the children of the brain.

— Jonathan Swift

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

— Jonathan Swift

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

— Jonathan Swift

An atheist has got one point beyond the devil.

— Jonathan Swift

They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.

— Jonathan Swift

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

— Jonathan Swift

Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.

— Jonathan Swift

By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty.

— Jonathan Swift

This wine should be eaten, it is too good to be drunk.

— Jonathan Swift

It is a maxim, that those, to whom everybody allows the second place, have an undoubted title to the first.

— Jonathan Swift

No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore, money is better than counsel.

— Jonathan Swift

We of this age have discovered a shorter, and more prudent method to become scholars and wits, without the fatigue of reading…

— Jonathan Swift

Though Diogenes lived in a tub, there might be, for aught I know, as much pride under his rags, as in the…

— Jonathan Swift

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

— Jonathan Swift

Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you…

— Jonathan Swift

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

— Jonathan Swift

“We have chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax; thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are…

— Jonathan Swift

For to enter the palace of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms, therefore men of much…

— Jonathan Swift

A true critic, in the perusal of a book, is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly…

— Jonathan Swift

Whoe'er excels in what we prize, Appears a hero in our eyes; Each girl, when pleased with what is taught, Will have…

— Jonathan Swift

A forward critic often dupes us With sham quotations peri hupsos, And if we have not read Longinus, Will magisterially outshine us.…

— Jonathan Swift

I have known some men possessed of good qualities which were very serviceable to others, but useless to themselves; like a sun-dial…

— Jonathan Swift

That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of…

— Jonathan Swift

Conscience signifies that knowledge which a man hath of his own thoughts and actions; and because, if a man judgeth fairly of…

— Jonathan Swift

I have now lost my barrier between me and death; God grant I may live to be as well prepared for it,…

— Jonathan Swift

Vain men delight in telling what Honours have been done them, what great Company they have kept, and the like; by which…

— Jonathan Swift

The motives of the best actions will not bear too strict an inquiry. It is allowed that the cause of most actions,…

— Jonathan Swift

If it were a rainy day, a drunken vigil, a fit of the spleen, a course of physic, sleepy Sunday, an ill…

— Jonathan Swift

Brutes find out where their talents lie; A bear will not attempt to fly, A foundered horse will oft debate Before he…

— Jonathan Swift

“A sort of animals, to whose share, [...] some small pittance of reason had fallen, whereof we made no other use, than…

— Jonathan Swift

“a crew of pirates are driven by a storm they know not whither; at length a boy discovers land from the topmast;…

— Jonathan Swift

“Jonathan Swift: Guliverova putovanja ll. dio U nadi da ću se još više umiliti njegovu veličanstvu, pripovjedio sam mu o izumu koji…

— Jonathan Swift

“He put this engine [a silver pocket watch] into our ears, which made an incessant noise, like that of a water-mill: and…

— Jonathan Swift