Jonathan Swift

I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.

The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclined men in the course of virtue, but seldom or ever reclaims the vicious.

Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible.

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.

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

For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.

Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.

I remember it was with extreme difficulty that I could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word opinion, or how a point could be disputable; because reason taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain; and beyond our knowledge we cannot do either.

May you live all the days of your life.

Punning is a talent which no man affects to despise but he that is without it.

Undoubtedly, philosophers are in the right when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.

Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.

We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.

Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting.

No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.

It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.

If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.

Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.

Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.

Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.

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