Jonathan Swift

“האם אין זו מגרעתם הטבעית של כל בני אדם לדבר על דברים שבהם אין הם מבינים דבר?”

“לזקן שבבני אדם יש תמיד תקווה להאריך את חייו עד יום המחרת.”

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

“As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.”

“Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.”

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

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

“May you live all the days of your life.”

“Where there are large powers with little ambition... nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes.”

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

“Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together; Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.”

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

“Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.”

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

“I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.”

“I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.”

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

“Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.”

“They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man's goods from thieves, but honesty has no defence against superior cunning; and, since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and connived at, or has no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage.”

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