Jonathan Swift

The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.

Usually speaking the worst-bred person in company is a young traveller just returned from abroad.

Very few men properly speaking live at present but are providing to live another time.

And he gave it for his opinion that whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before would deserve better of mankind and do more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together.

Brutes find out where their talents lie a bear will not attempt to fly.

Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.

When I am reading a book whether wise or silly it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.

I know Sir John will go though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs.

Promise and pie-crust are made to be broken.

I always love to begin a journey on Sundays because I shall have the prayers of the church to preserve all that travel by land or by water.

Tis an old maxim in the schools That flattery's the food of fools - Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit.

Possession they say is eleven points of the law.

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy is the best bred in the company.

May you live all the days of your life.

When the world has once begun to use us ill and afterwards continues the same treatment with less scruple or ceremony as men do to a whore.

Lord! I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.

I heard the little bird say so.