177 quotes
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.
Proper words in proper places, make the true definition of a style.
I said the thing which was not. (For they have no word in their language to express lying or falsehood.)
Gulliver's Travels (1726)
He made it a part of his religion never to say grace to his meat.
A Tale of a Tub (1704)
A wise man is never less alone than when he is alone.
It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffeehouse, for the voice of the kingdom.
The Conduct of the Allies (1711)
But nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches, as to conceive how others can be in want.
It is a maxim, that those to whom everybody allows the second place have an undoubted title to the first.
A Tale of a Tub (1704)
Violent zeal for truth hath an hundred to one odds to be either petulancy, ambition, or pride.
There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake, though all the World sees them to be in downright nonsense.
Satire, by being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any.
A Tale of a Tub (1704)
Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible.
I swear she's no chicken; she's on the wrong side of thirty, if she be a day.
Polite Conversation (1738)
He is taller by almost the breadth of my nail, than any of his court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into the beholders.
Gulliver's Travels (1726)
'Tis an old maxim in the schools,
That flattery's the food of fools;
Yet now and then your men of wit
Will condescend to take a bit.
Cadenus and Vanessa (1713)
She looks as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.
Polite Conversation (1738)
Possession, they say, is eleven points of the law.
There's none so blind as they that won't see.
Polite Conversation (1738)
Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy is the best bred in the company.
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.
Thoughts on Religion (1765)