Jonathan Swift

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.

May you live all the days of your life.

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

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

Undoubtedly, philosophers are in the right when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.

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

Falsehood flies, and the 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.

Argument is the worst of all instruments for discovering truth.

The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter and a torrent of words; for whoever is master of an art, and hath all the ideas necessary in his mind, expresses himself with the greatest difficulty.

Last words are for fools who haven't said enough.

Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.

He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.

Principally, I hate and detest that animal called man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.

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

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.

The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.

Although party may be a necessary evil in a free government, yet it is a evil that is always to be dreaded.

The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.

No wise man ever wished to be younger.