Age Quotes by Jonathan Swift

Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.

— Jonathan Swift

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

— Jonathan Swift

Everyone desires long life, not one old age.

— Jonathan Swift

Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.

— Jonathan Swift

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

— Jonathan Swift

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

— Jonathan Swift

When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.

— Jonathan Swift

Religion seems to have grown an infant with age, and requires miracles to nurse it, as it had in its infancy.

— Jonathan Swift

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

— 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

Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of…

— Jonathan Swift

When men grow virtuous in their old age, they are merely making a sacrifice to God of the Devil's leavings.

— Jonathan Swift

If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age…

— Jonathan Swift

In all assemblies, though you wedge them ever so close, we may observe this peculiar property, that over their heads there is…

— Jonathan Swift

What vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken…

— Jonathan Swift

Dignity, high station, or great riches, are in some sort necessary to old men, in order to keep the younger at a…

— Jonathan Swift

If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning etc., beginning from his youth, and so go to…

— Jonathan Swift

It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next. "Future ages shall talk of…

— Jonathan Swift

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

— Jonathan Swift

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

— Jonathan Swift

There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could…

— Jonathan Swift

No man was every so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.

— Jonathan Swift

Arbitrary power is the natural object of temptation to a prince, as wine and women to a young fellow, or a bribe…

— Jonathan Swift

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

— Jonathan Swift