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.
JONATHAN SWIFTThe 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.
More Jonathan Swift Quotes
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Everyone desires long life, not one old age.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
Small causes are sufficient to make a man uneasy, when great ones are not in the way: for want of a block he will stumble at a straw.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
Argument is the worst sort of conversation.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
I love good creditable acquaintance; I love to be the worst of the company.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
It is a miserable thing to live in suspense; it is the life of the spider.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
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 -
There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
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.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
War: that mad game the world so loves to play.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
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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.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
It is as hard to satirize well a man of distinguished vices, as to praise well a man of distinguished virtues.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
If you were not reasoned into your beliefs, you cannot be reasoned out of them.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.
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.
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There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
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There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
It is the talent of human nature to run from one extreme to another.
JONATHAN SWIFT -
We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
JONATHAN SWIFT