177 quotes
Poor Nations are hungry, and rich Nations are proud, and Pride and Hunger will ever be at Variance.
Gulliver's Travels (1726)
The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides,
While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides.
If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.
The rolling fictions grow in strength and size,
Each author adding to the former lies.
The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable; for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.
Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711)
Ever eating, never cloying,
All-devouring, all-destroying,
Never finding full repast,
Till I eat the world at last.
The latter part of a wise man’s life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former.
Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711)
Unjustly poets we asperse:
Truth shines the brighter clad in verse,
And all the fictions they pursue
Do but insinuate what is true.
To Stella (1720)
Who ever knew an honest brute
at law his neighbor prosecute?
The Logicians Refuted (1735)
Convey a libel in a frown,
And wink a reputation down!
Under this window in stormy weather
I marry this man and woman together;
Let none but Him who rules the thunder
Put this man and woman asunder.
I shall be like that tree,—I shall die at the top.
Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.
Polite Conversation (1738)
Books, the children of the brain.
A Tale of a Tub (1704)
Tell truth, and shame the devil.
Imitate him if you dare,
World-Besotted Traveler; he
Served human liberty.
The Stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711)
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.
Men are contented to be laughed at for their wit, but not for their folly.
Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711)
We are so fond of one another, because our ailments are the same.