Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.
— Jonathan Swift
The want of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.
It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.
Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.
A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.
Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.
Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
Observation is an old man's memory.
One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.
Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.
Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.
Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting.
Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.
He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.
My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
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.
It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.
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.
Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.
Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.
Don't set your wit against a child.
There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.
I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.
The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.
What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.
Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.
Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
Principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.
If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.
We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
Every dog must have his day.
Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers because, whoever shares his thoughts with the public will convince them as he himself appears convinced.
Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.
Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.
No wise man ever wished to be younger.
It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.
It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.
There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
