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So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.

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Jun 03, 2025

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About Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift (November 30, 1667 - October 19, 1745) was an Irish cleric, Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin, satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for Whigs then for Tories), and poet, famous for works like Gulliver's Travels , A Modest Proposal , A Journal to Stella , The Drapier's Letters , The Battle of the Books , and A Tale of a Tub . Swift is probably the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. Swift published all of his works under pseudonyms — such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M.B. Drapier — or anonymously. He is also known for being a master of two styles of satire; the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.

Popular Jonathan Swift Quotes

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

Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they make us stronger for the time, leave us the weaker ever after.

If a man should register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning, etc., beginning from his youth, and so go on to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last.

Vision: the art of seeing the invisible.

I've often wish'd that I had clear, For life, six hundred pounds a year; A handsome house to lodge a friend; A river at my garden's end; A terrace walk, and half a rood Of land set out to plant a wood.

A penny for your thoughts.

There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.

Instead of dirt and poison we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax; thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.

Proper words in proper places, make the true definition of style.

'T is as cheap sitting as standing.

The sight of you is good for sore eyes.

Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.

But you think... that it is time for me to have done with the world, and so I would if I could get into a better before I was called into the best, and not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.

It is a maxim, that those to whom everybody allows the second place have an undoubted title to the first.

Seamen have a custom, when they meet a whale, to fling him out an empty tub by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the ship.

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

If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.

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

I know Sir John will go, though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs.

Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination.

The most positive men are the most credulous.

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.

'T is nothing when you are used to it.

What vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me, although I am not so old in proportion to them as I formerly was: which I can prove by arithmetic, for then I was double their age, which now I am not. Letter to Alexander Pope. 7 Feb. 1736.

If they would, for Example, praise the Beauty of a Woman, or any other Animal, they describe it by Rhombs, Circles, Parallelograms, Ellipses, and other geometrical terms ...

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

Brutes find out where their talents lie; A bear will not attempt to fly, A foundered horse will oft debate Before he tries a five barred gate. A dog by instinct turns aside Who sees the ditch too deep and wide, But man we find the only creature Who, led by folly, combats nature; Who, when she loudly cries—Forbear! With obstinacy fixes there; And where the genius least inclines, Absurdly bends his whole designs.

May you live all the days of your life.

It often happens that, if a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done its work, and there is no further occasion for it.

It is likewise to be observed that this society hath a peculiar chant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply.

Lord, I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing!

I always like to begin a journey on Sundays, because I shall have the prayers of the Church to preserve all that travel by land or by water.

There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.

I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world.

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.

She has more goodness in her little finger than he has in his whole body.

So geographers, in Afric Marriages, With savage pictures fill their gaps, And o'er unhabitable downs Place elephants for want of towns.

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

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

'T is an old maxim in the schools, That flattery 's the food of fools; Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit.

Nothing is so great an instance of ill-manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; if you flatter only one or two, you affront the rest.

He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers.

Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.

Every dog must have his day.

The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet. and Doctor Merryman.

It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.

So, naturalists observe, a flea Hath smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller fleas to bite ‘em, And so proceed ad infinitum. Thus every poet, in his kind, Is bit by him that comes behind.

Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.

She looks as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork.

It is is men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.

Do you think I was born in a wood to be afraid of an owl?

There’s none so blind as they that won’t see.

If it had been a bear it would have bit you.

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.

She 's no chicken; she 's on the wrong side of thirty, if she be a day.

This is the sublime and refined point of felicity, called, the possession of being well deceived; the serene peaceful state of being a fool among knaves.

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

Monday is parson's holiday.

Bachelor's fare: Bread and cheese, and kisses.

Faith, that's as well said, as if I had said it myself.

I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.

Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.

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

Every man desires to live long; but no man would be old.

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

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

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

Of a Tale of a Tub: Good God! what a genius I had when I wrote that book.

It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.

A fool can ask more questions than the wisest can answer.

Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps as few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.

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

An idle reason lessens the weight of the good ones you gave before.

Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as in books it is generally the worst sort of reading.

Books, the children of the brain.

Dreams are mere productions of the brain, And fools consult interpreters in vain.

Ever eating, never cloying, All-devouring, all-destroying, Never finding full repast, Till I eat the world at last.

He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.

Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provisions of life, and are allured by their Appetites to their destruction.

If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such scoundrels.

Religion is too often talked of, but too little known.

It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, And so universal as death, should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.

Satire, by being leveled at all, is never resented for an offence by any.

Life is a tragedy wherein we sit as spectators for a while And then act our part in it.

Most sorts of diversion, in men, children and other animals, are an imitation of fighting.

Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.

So weak thou art that fools thy power despise; And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise.

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

There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.

Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together; Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.

Usually speaking, the worst-bred person in company is a young traveler just returned from abroad.

Vision - The art of seeing things invisible.

War! that mad game the world so loves to play.

Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.

In oratory, the greatest art is to conceal art.

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

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