When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
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
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
All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor; it is like spending this year part of the next year's revenues
Jonathan Swift
Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
Jonathan Swift
We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
Jonathan Swift
Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping.
Jonathan Swift
Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as in books it is generally the worst sort of reading
Jonathan Swift