But by what I have gathered from your own relation, and the answers I have with much pains wrung and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.

— Jonathan Swift

Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.

— Jonathan Swift

Company is like a dog who dirt those most whom he loves best.

— Jonathan Swift

Complaint is the largest tribute Heaven receives.

— Jonathan Swift

Dignity high station or great riches are in some sort necessary to old men in order to keep the younger at a distance who are otherwise too apt to insult them upon the score of their age.

— 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

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: like a man, who hath thought of a good repartee when the discourse is changed, or the company parted; or like a physician, who hath found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.

— Jonathan Swift

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

— Jonathan Swift

For this kind of commodity will not bear exportation, the flesh being of too tender a consistence to admit a long continuance in salt, although perhaps I could name a country which would be glad to eat up our whole nation without it.

— Jonathan Swift