Quotes by Jonathan Swift

“May you live every day of your life.”

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

“He asked me, "what were the usual causes or motives that made one country go to war with another?" I answered "they were innumerable; but I should only mention a few of the chief. Sometimes the amb...”

“It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.”

“And he gave it for his opinion, "that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do ...”

“He likewise directed, that every senator in the great council of a nation, after he had delivered his opinion, and argued in the defence of it, should be obliged to give his vote directly contrary;...”

“The tiny Lilliputians surmise that Gulliver's watch may be his god, because it is that which, he admits, he seldom does anything without consulting.”

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

“That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.”

“Books, the children of the brain.”

“Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.”

“Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect: like a man, who hath thought of a good...”

“He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.”

“take a strict view of their excrements, and, from the colour, the odour, the taste, the consistence, the crudeness or maturity of digestion, form a judgment of their thoughts and designs; because m...”

“There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof Ihope there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am notunderstood, it shall be concluded that something very u...”

“I have one word to say upon the subject of profound writers, who are grown very numerous of late; and I know very well the judicious world is resolved to list me in that number. I conceive therefor...”

“He was perfectly astonished with the historical account gave him of our affairs during the last century; protesting it was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, ...”

“They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man...”

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

“Judges... are picked out from the most dextrous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy, and having been biased all their lives against truth or equity, are under such a fatal necessity of favoring frau...”