They have a notion, that when people are met together, a short silence does much improve conversation: this I found to be true; for during those little intermissions of talk, new ideas would arise in their minds, which very much enlivened the discourse.

— Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift Quotes

I rather take this quality to spring from a very common infirmity of human nature, inclining us to be most curious and conceited in matters where we have least concern, and for which we are least adapted by study or nature.

— Jonathan Swift

If a lie be believed only for an hour, it hath done its work.

— Jonathan Swift

Lilliputians think nothing can be more unjust, than for people, in subservience to their own appetites, to bring children into the world, and leave the burthen of supporting them on the public. As.

— Jonathan Swift

He said, he knew no reason why those who entertain opinions prejudicial to the public should be obliged to change, or should not be obliged to conceal them. And as it was tyranny in any government to require the first, so it was weakness not to enforce the second: for a man may be allowed to keep poisons in his closet, but not to vend them about for cordials.

— Jonathan Swift

The Houyhnhnm’s notion of truth and falsehood. The author’s discourse disapproved by his master. The author gives a more particular account of himself, and the accidents of his voyage. M.

— Jonathan Swift

The heat I had contracted by coming very near the flames, and by my labouring to quench them, made the wine begin to operate by urine; which I voided in such a quantity, and applied so well to the proper places, that in three minutes the fire was wholly extinguished; and the rest of that noble pile, which had cost so many ages in erecting, preserved from destruction.

— Jonathan Swift

They all agreed, that I could not be produced according to the regular laws of nature; because I was not framed with a capacity of preserving my life, either by swiftness, or climbing of trees, or digging holes in the earth.

— Jonathan Swift

When a man’s fancy gets astride on his reason, when imagination is at cuffs with the senses, and common understanding as well as common sense, is kicked out of doors; the first proselyte he makes is himself.

— Jonathan Swift

For this kind of commodity will not bear exportation, the flesh being of too tender a consistence to admit a long continuance in salt, although perhaps I could name a country which would be glad to eat up our whole nation without it.

— Jonathan Swift

Such constant irreconcilable enemies to science are the common people.

— Jonathan Swift

Elephants of the Gun-Team.

— Jonathan Swift

The nurse, to quiet her babe, made use of a rattle which was a kind of hollow vessel filled with great stones, and fastened by a cable to the child’s waist: but all in vain; so that she was forced to apply the last remedy by giving it suck.

— Jonathan Swift

And when I began to consider that, by copulating with one of the Yahoo species I had become a parent of more, it struck me with the utmost shame, confusion, and horror.

— Jonathan Swift

It is observed, that the red haired of both sexes are more libidinous and mischievous than the rest, whom yet they much exceed in strength and activity.

— Jonathan Swift

And here, though it makes an odd sound, yet it is necessary to say, that whoever professes himself a member of the Church of England, ought to believe a God and his providence, together with revealed religion, and the divinity of Christ. For.

— Jonathan Swift

The other project was, a scheme for entirely abolishing all words whatsoever; and this was urged as a great advantage in point of health, as well as brevity.

— Jonathan Swift

We have no better materials to compound the priesthood of, than the mass of mankind, which corrupted as it is, those who receive orders must have some vices to leave behind them when they enter into the Church, and if a few do still adhere, it is no wonder, but rather a great one that they are no worse. Therefore.

— Jonathan Swift

For these reasons, the trade of a soldier is held the most honorable of all others, because a soldier is a Yahoo hired to kill, in cold blood, as many of his own species, who have never offended him, as possibly he can.

— Jonathan Swift

If a struldbrug happen to marry one of his own kind, the marriage is dissolved of course, by the courtesy of the kingdom, as soon as the younger of the two comes to be fourscore; for the law thinks it a reasonable indulgence, that those who are condemned, without any fault of their own, to a perpetual continuance in the world, should not have their misery doubled by the load of a wife. “As.

— Jonathan Swift

But though a Church of England man thinks every species of government equally lawful, he does not think them equally expedient; or for every country indifferently. There.

— Jonathan Swift
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