662 Quotes by Jonathan Swift

Life is a tragedy wherein we sit as spectators for a while and then act our part in it.

I used to wonder how a man of birth and spirit could endure to be wholly insignificant and obscure in a foreign country, when he might live with lustre in his own.

Unjustly poets we asperse: Truth shines the brighter clad in verse, And all the fictions they pursue Do but insinuate what is true.

One of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish had been left unsaid

The chameleon, who is said to feed upon nothing but air, has of all animals the nimblest tongue.

Few are qualified to shine in company, but it is in most men's power to be agreeable.

Common fluency of speech in many men and most women is owing to a scarcity of matter.

Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruption.

If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.