What vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me, although I am not so old in proportion to them as I formerly was: which I can prove by arithmetic, for then I was double their age, which now I am not. Letter to Alexander Pope. 7 Feb. 1736.

Jonathan Swift

Categorized in : Years Friendship Age

When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.

Jonathan Swift

truth education funny

We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

Jonathan Swift

hate religious love

Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible.

Jonathan Swift

leadership teacher inspirational

Brisk talkers are generally slow thinkers.

Jonathan Swift

talkers thinker talking

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.

Jonathan Swift

break-through law inspirational

You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday

Jonathan Swift

rejection yesterday writing

Judges... are picked out from the most dextrous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy, and having been biased all their lives against truth or equity, are under such a fatal necessity of favoring fraud, perjury and oppression, that I have known several of them to refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty by doing any thing unbecoming their nature in office.

Jonathan Swift

office judging justice

There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.

Jonathan Swift

constant literature world

There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.

Jonathan Swift

beast talking men

Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect.

Jonathan Swift

limping too-late men

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

Jonathan Swift

family wisdom friendship

Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.

Jonathan Swift

power blessed blessing

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

Jonathan Swift

cute men long

That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.

Jonathan Swift

philosophy believe fall

I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and all my love is toward individuals: for instance, I hate the tribe of lawyers, but I love Counsellor Such-a-one, and Judge Such-a-one: so with physicians - I will not speak of my own trade - soldiers, English, Scotch, French, and the rest. But principally I hate and detest that animal called man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth. This is the system upon which I have governed myself many years, but do not tell.

Jonathan Swift

hate animal love-is

Cruel people are ever cowards in emergency.

Jonathan Swift

emergencies coward people

May you live all the days of your life.

Jonathan Swift

birthday inspirational life

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

Jonathan Swift

slavery definitions government

We of this age have discovered a shorter, and more prudent method to become scholars and wits, without the fatigue of reading or of thinking.

Jonathan Swift

criticism reading thinking

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

Jonathan Swift

wise silly book