I’m as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.
JONATHAN SWIFTFalsehood 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.
More Jonathan Swift Quotes
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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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Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired
JONATHAN SWIFT -
One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
Although the devil be the father of lies, he seems, like other great inventors, to have lost much of his reputation by the continual improvements that have been made upon him.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
No wise man ever wished to be younger.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
We of this age have discovered a shorter, and more prudent method to become scholars and wits, without the fatigue of reading or of thinking.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.
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For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
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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 -
For to enter the palace of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms, therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back-door.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
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.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
This made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavor to do himself honor among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him.
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 -
No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
You cannot reason a person out of something they were not reasoned into.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
It is a miserable thing to live in suspense; it is the life of the spider.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter and a scarcity of words; for whosoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt, in speaking, to hesitate upon the choice of both.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.
JONATHAN SWIFT