The collection / 224 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01c. 1706 AD

I always like to begin a journey on Sundays, because I shall have the prayers of the Church to preserve all that travel by land or by water.

Jonathan Swift / quote

02c. 1706 AD

I know Sir John will go, though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs.

Jonathan Swift / quote

03c. 1706 AD

I thought you and he were hand-in-glove.

Jonathan Swift / quote

04c. 1706 AD

'T is happy for him that his father was before him.

Jonathan Swift / quote

05c. 1706 AD

There is none so blind as they that won't see.

Jonathan Swift / quote

06c. 1706 AD

She watches him as a cat would watch a mouse.

Jonathan Swift / quote

07c. 1706 AD

She pays him in his own coin.

Jonathan Swift / quote

08c. 1706 AD

There was all the world and his wife.

Jonathan Swift / quote

09c. 1706 AD

Sharp 's the word with her.

Jonathan Swift / quote

10c. 1706 AD

There 's two words to that bargain.

Jonathan Swift / quote

11c. 1706 AD

I shall be like that tree,—I shall die at the top.

Jonathan Swift / quote

12Undated

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

Jonathan Swift / quote

13Undated

When men grow virtuous in their old age, they are merely making a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.

Jonathan Swift / quote

14Undated

Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination.

Jonathan Swift / quote

15Undated

Nature has left every man a capacity of being agreeable, though not of shining in company; and there are a hundred men sufficiently qualified for both who, by a very few faults, that they might correct in half an hour, are not so much as tolerable.

Jonathan Swift / quote

16Undated

Nothing is so great an instance of ill-manners as flattery.

Jonathan Swift / quote

17Undated

I would rather be a freeman among slaves than a slave among freemen.

Jonathan Swift / quote

18Undated

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse.

Jonathan Swift / quote

19Undated

One principal part of good breeding is to suit our behavior to the three several degrees of men: our superiors, our equals, and those below us.

Jonathan Swift / quote

20Undated

A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.

Jonathan Swift / quote

21Undated

Usually speaking, the worst-bred person in company is a young traveler just returned from abroad.

Jonathan Swift / quote

22Undated

Violent zeal for truth has a hundred to one odds to be either petulancy, ambition, or pride.

Jonathan Swift / quote

23Undated

Although men are accused of not knowing their weakness, yet perhaps as few know their strength.

Jonathan Swift / quote

24Undated

Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation; as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.

Jonathan Swift / quote