Quotes by Jonathan Swift

"Vision is the art of seeing things invisible."

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

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

"'Tis 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."

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

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

"Every man desires tolive long; but no man would be old."

"As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold."

"Observation is an old man's memory."

"A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle."

"There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency."

"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."

"Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest."

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

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

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

"It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom."

"A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention, by false speaking, to deceive and injure your neighbour."

"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."

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