662 Quotes by Jonathan Swift

Besides, I now considered myself as bound by the laws of hospitality, to a people who had treated me with so much expense and magnificence.

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.

Abstracts, abridgments, summaries, etc., have the same use with burning-glasses, – to collect the diffused light rays of wit and learning in authors, and make them point with warmth and quickness upon the reader’s imagination.

I’ve often wish’d that I had clear, For life, six hundred pounds a year; A handsome house to lodge a friend; A river at my garden’s end; A terrace walk, and half a rood Of land set out to plant a wood.

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.

Some time after, asking a friend at court how they came to fix on that determinate number, he told me that his majesty’s mathematicians, having taken the height of my body by the help of a quadrant, and finding it to exceed theirs in the proportion of twelve to one, they concluded from the similarity of their bodies, that mine must contain at least 1724 of theirs, and consequently would require as much food as was necessary to support that number of Lilliputians. By.

Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs, Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.

Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.