Top 400 Jonathan Swift Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.”

— Jonathan Swift

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2. “May you live every day of your life.”

— Jonathan Swift

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3. “You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place.”

— Jonathan Swift

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4. “A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.”

— Jonathan Swift

5. “Falsehood flies, and 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.”

— Jonathan Swift

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6. “Every day is an opportunity to make a new happy ending. May you live all the days of your life.”

— Jonathan Swift

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

— Jonathan Swift

8. “The worthiest people are the most injured by slander, as is the best fruit which the birds have been pecking at.”

— Jonathan Swift

9. “It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.”

— Jonathan Swift

10. “There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.”

— Jonathan Swift

11. “Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it.”

— Jonathan Swift

12. “Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired.”

— Jonathan Swift

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

— Jonathan Swift

14. “When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.”

— Jonathan Swift

15. “No wise man ever wished to be younger.”

— Jonathan Swift

16. “Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.”

— Jonathan Swift

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

— Jonathan Swift

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

— Jonathan Swift

19. “Bread is the staff of life.”

— Jonathan Swift

20. “The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.”

— Jonathan Swift

21. “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.”

— Jonathan Swift

22. “You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday.”

— Jonathan Swift

23. “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”

— Jonathan Swift

24. “Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.”

— Jonathan Swift

25. “Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.”

— Jonathan Swift

26. “Happiness is the perpetual possession of being well deceived.”

— Jonathan Swift

27. “I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world.”

— Jonathan Swift

28. “I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.”

— Jonathan Swift

29. “Observation is an old man’s memory.”

— Jonathan Swift

30. “When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.”

— Jonathan Swift

31. “Undoubtedly, philosophers are in the right when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.”

— Jonathan Swift

32. “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.”

— Jonathan Swift

33. “Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.”

— Jonathan Swift

34. “A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.”

— Jonathan Swift

35. “Hail fellow, well met.”

— Jonathan Swift

36. “Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.”

— Jonathan Swift

37. “He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.”

— Jonathan Swift

38. “Conversation is but carving! Give no more to every guest Than he’s able to digest.”

— Jonathan Swift

39. “To acknowledge you were wrong yesterday is simply to let the world know that you are wiser today than you were then.”

— Jonathan Swift

40. “I’m as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.”

— Jonathan Swift

41. “So geographers, in Africa maps, With savage pictures fill their gaps, And o’er uninhabitable downs Place elephants for want of towns.”

— Jonathan Swift

42. “In men desire begets love, and in women love begets desire.”

— Jonathan Swift

43. “How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice when they will not so much as take warning.”

— Jonathan Swift

44. “Every dog must have his day.”

— Jonathan Swift

45. “Few are qualified to shine in company, but it is in most men’s power to be agreeable.”

— Jonathan Swift

46. “The latter part of a wise person’s life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.”

— Jonathan Swift

47. “No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.”

— Jonathan Swift

48. “If you were not reasoned into your beliefs, you cannot be reasoned out of them.”

— Jonathan Swift

49. “Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.”

— Jonathan Swift

50. “Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.”

— Jonathan Swift