662 Quotes by Jonathan Swift

Lord, Madame, I have fed like a farmer; I shall grow as fat as a porpoise.

Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation td posterity? Let him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments.

She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitch folk.

I will venture to affirm, that the three seasons wherein our corn has miscarried did no more contribute to our present misery, than one spoonful of water thrown upon a rat already drowned would contribute to his death; and that the present plentiful harvest, although it should be followed by a dozen ensuing, would no more restore us, than it would the rat aforesaid to put him near the fire, which might indeed warm his fur-coat, but never bring him back to life.

I shall be like that tree-I shall die at the top.

A poor spirit is poorer than a poor purse. A very few pounds a year would ease a man of the scandal of avarice.

She wears her clothes as if they are thrown on with a pitchfork

He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers.

Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.