Irish satirist. cleric, political pamphleteer. He is best known for Gulliver’s Travels, an account of Lemuel Gulliver’s fanciful voyages. Jonathan Swift also published numerous political pamphlets. The most sensational of these short works, “A Modest Proposal,” is generally considered to be the most famous satirical essay in the English language.
He became a staunch supporter of the Protestant Church and worked hard to publicize the plight of his fellow Irishmen, who were being treated despicably by the English at the time. Swift did not believe much in the new theoretical science and rational philosophy. He did not think that it would contribute to the moral improvement of people. On the contrary, he saw it as a very dangerous display of pride and confidence in the powers of human reasoning.
This undermined what he believed was the most important point of the traditional Christian faith, the belief that human beings are fundamentally flawed creatures. (1667-1745)
– Jonathan Swift Quotes –
The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.
~ Jonathan Swift
Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
~ Jonathan Swift
Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
~ Jonathan Swift
We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
~ Jonathan Swift
Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
~ Jonathan Swift
Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
~ Jonathan Swift
Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.
~ Jonathan Swift
Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.
~ Jonathan Swift
What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.
~ Jonathan Swift
A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.
~ Jonathan Swift
A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention, by false speaking, to deceive and injure your neighbour.
~ 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
There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
~ 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
The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
~ 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
I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
~ Jonathan Swift
Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.
~ 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
As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.
~ Jonathan Swift
Principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.
~ Jonathan Swift
A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
~ Jonathan Swift
Books, the children of the brain.
~ Jonathan Swift
May you live every day of your life.
~ Jonathan Swift
No wise man ever wished to be younger.
~ Jonathan Swift
Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.
~ Jonathan Swift
A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying… that he is wiser today than yesterday.
~ Jonathan Swift
The latter part of a wise person’s life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.
~ Jonathan Swift
There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
~ Jonathan Swift
Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting.
~ 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
One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.
~ Jonathan Swift
I’ve always believed no matter how many shots I miss, I’m going to make the next one.
~ Jonathan Swift
We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
~ Jonathan Swift
Proper words in proper places make the true definiton of style.
~ Jonathan Swift
The want of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.
~ Jonathan Swift
I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.
~ Jonathan Swift
Observation is an old man’s memory.
~ Jonathan Swift
Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.
~ Jonathan Swift
If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.
~ Jonathan Swift
Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
~ Jonathan Swift
Don’t set your wit against a child.
~ Jonathan Swift
Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.
~ Jonathan Swift
Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.
~ Jonathan Swift
Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
~ 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
We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one 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
Every dog must have his day.
~ Jonathan Swift
Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.
~ Jonathan Swift
Where there are large powers with little ambition… nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes.
~ 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
Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers because, whoever shares his thoughts with the public will convince them as he himself appears convinced.
~ Jonathan Swift
It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.
~ Jonathan Swift
Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.
~ Jonathan Swift
I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
~ Jonathan Swift
My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
~ Jonathan Swift
It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.
~ Jonathan Swift
There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.
~ 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
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.
~ Jonathan Swift
Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
~ Jonathan Swift
May you live all the days of your life.
~ Jonathan Swift
Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
~ 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
He was a bold man that first eat on oyster.
~ Jonathan Swift
For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
~ Jonathan Swift
He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
~ Jonathan Swift
Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
~ Jonathan Swift
Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.
~ Jonathan Swift
It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.
~ Jonathan Swift
The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.
~ Jonathan Swift
