Jonathan Swift

It is impossible for a man who is not a great master of the English language to make himself understood in print.

If a man would register all his sayings and doings, he would be ashamed of himself.

The commonest things are the most useful; which shows that nature is a great economist.

I have always held the opinion that a man who can write a good letter is a man who can do anything.

The best way to prove the truth of a thing is to deny it.

It is a great error to take the advice of a fool, but it is a greater to take it and not follow it.

What is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?

The corruption of the best things is the worst.

I am not concerned with the things that are, but with the things that ought to be.

The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

A Modest Proposal for preventing the Children of poor People from being a Burthen to their Parents, or the Country.

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

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

Books, like men their authors, have no more than one way of coming into the world, but there are ten thousand to go out of it, and return no more.

I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and all my love is toward individuals.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

No man was ever so unadorned as to believe he needed no improvement in his mind.

The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.

I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country.

What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not we are told expressly, that they neither marry, nor are given in marriage.