Jonathan Swift – 24 Quotes

24 Quotes by Jonathan Swift

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

– Jonathan Swift

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

– Jonathan Swift

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

– Jonathan Swift

Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.

– Jonathan Swift

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.

– Jonathan Swift

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

– Jonathan Swift

The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.

– 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

He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.

– Jonathan Swift

For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.

– Jonathan Swift

Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.

– 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

Words are but wind and learning is nothing but words ergo, learning is nothing but wind.

– Jonathan Swift

May you live all the days of your life.

– Jonathan Swift

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

– Jonathan Swift

A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.

– Jonathan Swift

I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.

– Jonathan Swift

Where there are large powers with little ambition… nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes.

– Jonathan Swift

Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.

– Jonathan Swift

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

– Jonathan Swift

The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.

– Jonathan Swift

I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.

– Jonathan Swift

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

– Jonathan Swift

Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.

– Jonathan Swift