Jonathan Swift Quotes | GloryQuotes

Jonathan Swift Quotes About Wisdom

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

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

The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

Jonathan Swift Quotes About Life

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

Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.

May you live all the days of your life.

More Quotes by Jonathan Swift

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

Principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.

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

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

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

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

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

Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.

Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.

As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.

It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.

Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting.

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.

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

The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.

As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.

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

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.

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

There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.

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

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.

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

It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.

Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.

If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.

Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.

The want of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.

What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.

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

The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.

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

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.

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.

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

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

There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.

Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.

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

One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.

We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.

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.

Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.

There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.

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.

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.

He was a bold man that first eat an oyster.

Browse 69 quotes attributed to Jonathan Swift, listed in the source data as a Irish Writer, organized around themes such as Wisdom, Life, Writing. Use the topic links to explore similar quotes, or browse the full author collection in one place.