# Jonathan Swift

- Quotes: 15
- Author page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-swift

## Books

- [Gulliver's Travels](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-swift/gullivers-travels.md) — 7 quotes

## Recently added quotes

> 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.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-swift/gullivers-travels/he-is-taller.md)

> He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-swift/gullivers-travels/he-had-been.md)

> And he gave it for his opinion, that whosoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-swift/gullivers-travels/and-he-gave.md)

> I said the thing which was not. (For they have no word in their language to express lying or falsehood.)

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-swift/gullivers-travels/i-said-the.md)

> I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-swift/gullivers-travels/i-cannot-but.md)

> It is a maxim among lawyers that whatever hath been done before may 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. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities to justify the most iniquitous opinions, and the judges never fail of directing them accordingly.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-swift/gullivers-travels/it-is-a-maxim.md)

> Poor Nations are hungry, and rich Nations are proud, and Pride and Hunger will ever be at Variance.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-swift/gullivers-travels/poor-nations-are.md)

> Bread is the staff of life.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-swift/a-tale-of-a-tub/bread-is-the.md)

> Seamen have a custom, when they meet a whale, to fling him out an empty tub by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the ship.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-swift/a-tale-of-a-tub/seamen-have-a-custom.md)

> I have one word to say upon the subject of profound writers, who are grown very numerous of late; and I know very well the judicious world is resolved to list me in that number. I conceive therefore, as to the business of being profound, that it is with writers as with wells - a person with good eyes may see to the bottom of the deepest, provided any water be there: and often when there is nothing in the world at the bottom besides dryness and dirt, though it be but a yard and a-half under-ground, it shall pass, however, for wondrous deep upon no wiser reason than because it is wondrous dark

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-swift/a-tale-of-a-tub/i-have-one.md)

> It is a maxim, that those to whom everybody allows the second place have an undoubted title to the first.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-swift/a-tale-of-a-tub/it-is-a-maxim.md)

> As boys do sparrows, with flinging salt upon their tails.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jonathan-swift/a-tale-of-a-tub/as-boys-do-sparrows.md)