Jonathan Swift is one of the most famous authors of the 18th century. His written works are satirical, often taking a political perspective and making fun of human society. He had a long career and was well known for his books Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal.
He was born on November 30, 1667, in Dublin, Ireland. He worked as a secretary to various people in Ireland and England but later decided to launch his writing career when he published “A Modest Proposal” in 1729.
Swift is best known for his satirical novella “Gulliver’s Travels,” a satire of human nature and society. In this work, Swift imagined what life would be like if the human race were visited by a group of travelers from the land of Lilliput.
In 1711 he anonymously published Gulliver’s Travels which became immensely popular due to its satirical commentary on human nature.
Here are his most famous and wise quotes that will upgrade your mind and make you see the world differently.
63 Inspirational Jonathan Swift Quotes
“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”
“Punning is a talent which no man affects to despise but he that is without it.”
“The worthiest people are the most injured by slander, as is the best fruit which the birds have been pecking at.”
“A wise man should have money in his head but not in his heart.”
“The greatest inventions were produced in the times of ignorance, as the use of the compass, gunpowder, and printing“
“Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.”
“When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”
“Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others could be in want.”
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.”
“Difference in opinions has cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine.”
“For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.”
“Good manners is the art of making people comfortable. Whoever makes the fewest people uncomfortable has the best manners.”
“Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.”
“Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers because, whoever shares his thoughts with the public will convince them as he himself appears convinced.”
“No wise man ever wished to be younger.”
“When a great genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign: that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”
“There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.”
“Brisk talkers are generally slow thinkers.”
“When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.”
“If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.”
“Every man desires to live long.”
“There’s none so blind as they that won’t see.”
“Where there are large powers with little ambition… nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes.”
“I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.”
“Discovery consists of seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what nobody else has thought.”
“No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.”
“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.”
“We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”
“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.”
“A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.”
“You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday”
“Words are the clothing of our thoughts.”
“The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.”
“It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.”
“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.”
“There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.”
“Every day is an opportunity to a make a new happy ending.”
“Pretense is the overrating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to.”
“Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.”
“The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.”
“Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.”
“Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.”
“A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.”
“Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.”
“There is no absolute success in the world, only constant progress.”
“Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers.”
“We are so fond of one another because our ailments are the same.”
“Undoubtedly, philosophers are in the right when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.”
“Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.”
“Besides, I now considered myself as bound by the laws of hospitality, to a people who had treated me with so much expense and magnificence.”
“To get angry is like to revenge yourself for the guilt of others.”
“Health is the greatest of all possessions.”
“Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.”
“We have chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax; thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.”
“A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, that he is wiser today than yesterday.”
“Truth shines the brighter clad in verse.”
“Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall be disappointed.”
“There’s none so blind as they won’t see.”
“We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”
“A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, that he is wiser today than yesterday..”
“Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.”
“A wise man is never less alone than when he is alone.”
“I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.”
“Poor Nations are hungry, and rich Nations are proud, and Pride and Hunger will ever be at Variance.”
