Jonathan Swift

No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore, money is better than counsel.

Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping.

Gold defiles with frequent touch; There's nothing fouls the hand so much.

Some people take more care to hide their wisdom than their folly.

The two most important things in life are good friends and a good chamber pot.

Happiness is a perpetual possession of being well deceived.

There are few things more to be lamented than that a man who has got an estate, makes not a better use of it for the good of his family, and to the advantage of the public.

It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again.

We are told that the world is a great Bedlam, where the lunatics are the majority, and the few who are in their right senses are shut up by the rest.

I have been for some years past, working upon a great work, which I intend to publish, and it is a complete refutation of all that hath ever been written upon the subject of government.

The world is a country which nobody ever yet knew by description.

I have spent my time in writing, and have not been a man of action.

The greatest inventions were at first but the objects of ridicule.

It is a miserable thing to be a dependent, and to have no other resource but the favor of great men.

I am not fond of giving advice, but when I do, I expect it to be taken.

The only difference between a wise man and a fool is that a wise man knows he is a fool, and a fool thinks he is wise.

It is an old maxim, that a man is never happy till he dies.

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.

Censorship is the tool of those who have to hide what they think and what they do.

The virtue of a woman is often a greater torment to her husband than her vice.