A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention, by false speaking, to deceive and injure your neighbour.
Jonathan Swift

A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying... that he is wiser today than yesterday.
Jonathan Swift

A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
Jonathan Swift

A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.
Jonathan Swift

A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.
Jonathan Swift

Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.
Jonathan Swift

As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
Jonathan Swift

As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.
Jonathan Swift

Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.
Jonathan Swift

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


Books, the children of the brain.
Jonathan Swift

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

Don't set your wit against a child.
Jonathan Swift

Every dog must have his day.
Jonathan Swift

Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
Jonathan Swift

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

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

He was a bold man that first eat an oyster.
Jonathan Swift

He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
Jonathan Swift

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