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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

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Jonathan Swift
Age: 77 †
Born: 1667
Born: November 30
Died: 1745
Died: October 19
Essayist
Human Rights Activist
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Pamphleteer
Philosopher
Poet
Priest
Prosaist
Public Figure
Dublin city
Isaac Bickerstaff
M. B. Drapier
Lemuel Gulliver
Simon Wagstaff
Intention
Indirect
Position
Consist
Lying
Deceive
Words
Hype
Desire
Neighbour
Doe
Deceiving
Speaking
False
Injure

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A lie is an excuse guarded
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Hereditary right should be kept sacred, not from any inalienable right in a particular family, but to avoid the consequences that usually attend the ambition of competitors.
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A true critic, in the perusal of a book, is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones.
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Pray steal me not, I'm Mrs. Dingley's, Whose heart in this four-footed thing lies.
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Nor do they trust their tongue alone, but speak a language of their own can read a nod, a shrug, a look, far better than a printed book convey a libel in a frown, and wink a reputation down.
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Lose no time to contradict her, Nor endeavor to convict her Only take this rule along, Always to advise her wrong, And reprove her when she's right She may then grow wise for spite.
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In all I wish, how happy should I be, Thou grand Deluder, were it not for thee? So weak thou art that fools thy power despise And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise.
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It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
Jonathan Swift
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Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired
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For poetry, he's past his prime, He takes an hour to find a rhyme His fire is out, his wit decayed, His fancy sunk, his muse a jade. I'd have him throw away his pen, But there's no talking to some men.
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We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
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It is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they are employed on as when they have lost their edge.
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A Child will make two Dishes at an Entertainment for Friends and when the Family dines alone, the fore or hind Quarter will makea reasonable Dish and seasoned with a little Pepper or Salt, will be very good Boiled on the fourth Day, especially in Winter.
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Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.
Jonathan Swift
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Men who possess all the advantages of life are in a state where there are many accidents to disorder and discompose, but few to please them.
Jonathan Swift
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Pride, ill nature, and want of sense are the three great sources of ill manners without some one of these defects, no man will behave himself ill for want of experience, or what, in the language of fools, is called knowing the world.
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It is not so much the being exempt from faults as the having overcome them that is an advantage to us it being with the follies of the mind as with weeds of a field, which if destroyed and consumed upon the place where they grow, enrich and improve it more than if none had ever sprung there.
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The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.
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Everybody wants to live forever, but nobody wants to grow old.
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A ridiculous passion which hath no being but in play-books and romances.
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