662 Quotes by Jonathan Swift

Conversation is but carving! Give no more to every guest Than he's able to digest.

A college joke to cure the dumps.

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

A true critic, in the perusal of a book, is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones.

Flattery is the worst and falsest way of showing our esteem.

What religion is he of? Why, he is an Anythingarian.

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

There is no talent so useful toward rising in the world, or which puts men more out of the reach of fortune, than that quality generally possessed by the dullest sort of men, and in common speech called discretion; a species of lower prudence, by the assistance of which, people of the meanest intellectuals, without any other qualification, pass through the world in great tranquillity, and with universal good treatment, neither giving nor taking offence.

I am convinced that if the virtuosi could once find out a world in the moon, with a passage to it, our women would wear nothing but what directly came from thence.