"An excuse is a lie guarded."
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Quote collection
Jonathan Swift quotes (page 3 of 22)
433 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it."
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"Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone."
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"I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning."
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"The worthiest people are the most injured by slander, as is the best fruit which the birds have been pecking at."
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"No wise man ever wished to be younger."
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"Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions."
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"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."
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"Hail fellow, well met."
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"You cannot reason a person out of something they were not reasoned into."
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"The various opinions of philosophers have scattered through the world as many plagues of the mind as Pandora's box did those of the body; only with this difference, that they have not left hope at the bottom."
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"For, if we take an examination of what is generally understood by happiness, as it has respect either to the understanding or the senses, we shall find all its properties and adjuncts will herd under this short definition: that it is a perpetual possession of being well deceived."
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"Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own."
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"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 more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together."
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"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."
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"No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience."
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"Argument is the worst sort of conversation."
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"Don't set your wit against a child."
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"I will venture to affirm, that the three seasons wherein our corn has miscarried did no more contribute to our present misery, than one spoonful of water thrown upon a rat already drowned would contribute to his death; and that the present plentiful harvest, although it should be followed by a dozen ensuing, would no more restore us, than it would the rat aforesaid to put him near the fire, which might indeed warm his fur-coat, but never bring him back to life."
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"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."
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