Top 400 Jonathan Swift Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next. “Future ages shall talk of this; they shall be famous to all posterity;” whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now.”

— Jonathan Swift

402. “The system of morality to be gathered from the ancient sages falls very short of that delivered in the gospel.”

— Jonathan Swift

403. “Silks, velvets, calicoes, and the whole lexicon of female fopperies.”

— Jonathan Swift

404. “We have an intuitive sense of our duty.”

— Jonathan Swift

405. “Every age might perhaps produce one or two geniuses, if they were not sunk under the censure and obloquy of plodding, servile, imitating pedants.”

— Jonathan Swift

406. “Let that be as it will, thus much is certain, that, however spiritual intrigues begin, they generally conclude like all others; they may branch upward toward heaven, but the root is in the earth.”

— Jonathan Swift

407. “There is no quality so contrary to any nature which one cannot affect, and put on upon occasion, in order to serve an interest.”

— Jonathan Swift

408. “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

409. “Hereditary right should be kept sacred, not from any inalienable right in a particular family, but to avoid the consequences that usually attend the ambition of competitors.”

— Jonathan Swift

410. “I cannot imagine why we should be at the expense to furnish wit for succeeding ages, when the former have made no sort of provision for ours.”

— Jonathan Swift

411. “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

412. “Opium is not so stupefying to many persons as an afternoon sermon.”

— Jonathan Swift

413. “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: like a man, who hath thought of a good repartee when the discourse is changed, or the company parted; or like a physician, who hath found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.”

— Jonathan Swift

414. “After all, I am not so violently bent upon my own opinion, as to reject any offer, proposed by wise men, which shall be found equally innocent, cheap, easy, and effectual.”

— Jonathan Swift

415. “Whence proceeds this weight we lay On what detracting people say? Their utmost malice cannot make Your head, or tooth, or finger ache; Nor spoil your shapes, distort your face, Or put one feature out of place.”

— Jonathan Swift

416. “Let a man be ne’er so wise, he may be caught with sober lies.”

— Jonathan Swift

417. “My hours of leisure I spent in reading the best authors, ancient and modern, being always provided with a good number of books; and when I was ashore, in observing the manners and dispositions of the people, as well as learning their language; wherein I had a great facility, by the strength of my memory.”

— Jonathan Swift

418. “Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age.”

— Jonathan Swift

419. “I desired that the Senate of Rome might appear before me in one large chamber, and a modern representative, in counterview, in another. The first seemed to be an assembly of heroes and demi-gods; the other, a knot of pedlars, pick-pockets, highwaymen, and bullies.”

— Jonathan Swift

420. “The emperor, and all his court, came out to meet us; but his great officers would by no means suffer his majesty to endanger his person by mounting on my body. At.”

— Jonathan Swift

421. “By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty.”

— Jonathan Swift

422. “When I gave that free censure of the country and its inhabitants, he made no further answer than by telling me, “that I had not been long enough among them to form a judgment; and that the different nations of the world had different customs;.”

— Jonathan Swift

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

— Jonathan Swift

424. “A favor is half granted, when graciously refused.”

— Jonathan Swift

425. “A ridiculous passion which hath no being but in play-books and romances.”

— Jonathan Swift

426. “Caesar freely confessed to me, that the greatest actions of his own life were not equal, by many degrees, to the glory of taking it away.”

— Jonathan Swift

427. “Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation.”

— Jonathan Swift

428. “I slept about eight hours, as I was afterwards assured; and it was no wonder, for the physicians, by the emperor’s order, had mingled a sleepy potion in the hogsheads of wine.”

— Jonathan Swift

429. “How low an opinion I had of human wisdom and integrity, when I was truly informed of the springs and motives of great enterprises and revolutions in the world, and of the contemptible accidents to which they owed their success.”

— Jonathan Swift

430. “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

431. “He leaves his wife to manage the inn; and as she is a woman of color, a pair of old bachelors like you and I may be excused for guessing that it is the wife, quite as much as the health, that sends him back to roving J.”

— Jonathan Swift

432. “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

433. “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

434. “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

435. “He then desired to know, “What arts were practised in electing those whom I called commoners: whether a stranger, with a strong purse, might not influence the vulgar voters to choose him before their own landlord, or the most considerable gentleman in the neighbourhood?”

— Jonathan Swift

436. “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

437. “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

438. “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

439. “Elephants of the Gun-Team.”

— Jonathan Swift