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.

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

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.

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.

He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.

May you live all the days of your life.

Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired.

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 a proper fund of materials, and a suitable talent for their arrangement, will readily deliver his thoughts without any difficulty or hesitation.

Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe how much it altered her person for the worse.

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.

The more years increase, the more does my hatred of human nature increase.

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

It is a maxim very generally received, that a man of great wit has a very short memory.

The greatest wits, and the greatest fools, are equally innocent of the world.

I have always been a great admirer of the proverb, 'Necessity is the mother of invention'.

It is a trite but true observation, that examples work more forcibly on the mind than precepts.

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

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

Although avarice is the most sordid of all vices, yet it is the least scandalous.