Jonathan Swift Quotes

Every dog must have his day.

Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind reception it meets with in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.

Religion supposed Heaven and Hell, the word of God, and sacraments, and twenty other circumstances which, taken seriously, are a wonderful check to wit and humour.

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

… the atheists, libertines, despisers of religion … that is to say all those who usually pass under the name of Free-thinkers.

Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination.

Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.

There’s none so blind as they that won’t see.

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

I am convinced that if the virtuosi could once find out a world in the moon, with a passage to it, our women would wear nothing but what directly came from thence.

Neither are any wars so furious and bloody, or of so long continuance as those occasioned by difference in opinion, especially if it be in things indifferent.

A traveler’s chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad-as well as good example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.