662 Quotes by Jonathan Swift

Liberty of conscience is nowadays only understood to be the liberty of believing what men please, but also of endeavoring to propagate that belief as much as they can.

When you set about your composing, it may be necessary for your ease, and better distillation of wit, to put on your worst clothes, and the worse the better; for an author, like a limbeck, will yield the better for having a rag about him: besides that, I have observed a gardener cut the outward rind of a tree (which is the surtout of it) to make it bear well; and this is a natural account of the usual poverty of poets, and is an argument why wits, of all men living, ought to be ill clad.

Pray steal me not, I'm Mrs. Dingley's, Whose heart in this four-footed thing lies.

Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.

When I am in danger of bursting, I will go and whisper among the reeds.

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

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

You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Under the rose, since here are none but friends, To own the truth we have some private ends.