177 quotes
I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711)
Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711)
Not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.
Fine words! I wonder where you stole 'em.
upon Chief Justice Whitshed's Motto for his coach (1724)
Satire is a kind of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.
The Battle of the Books (1704)
Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.
For conversation well endued;
She calls it witty to be rude;
And, placing raillery in railing,
Will tell aloud your greatest failing.
The Furniture of a Woman's Mind (1727)
Yet malice never was his aim;
He lashed the vice but spared the name.
No individual could resent,
Where thousands equally were meant.
Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift (1731)
As boys do sparrows, with flinging salt upon their tails.
A Tale of a Tub (1704)
Every man desires to live long, but no man would be old.
Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711)
Reason is a very light rider and easily shook off.
It is impossible that any thing so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.
Thoughts on Religion (1765)
Hail, follow, well met,
All dirty and wet:
Find out, if you can,
Who's master, who's man.
My Lady's Lamentation; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711)
Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping.
Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711)
The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.
Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711)
When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711)
Hobbes clearly proves that every creature
Lives in a state of war by nature.
On Poetry: Poetry, a Rhapsody (1733)
Promises and Pye-Crusts,… are made to be broken.
I warrant you lay abed till the cows came home.
Polite Conversations (1738)