Jonathan Swift

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.

The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.

We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

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.

Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.

Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.

When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.

I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.

Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.

No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.

Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.

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.

Where there are large powers with little ambition... nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes.

Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.

Proper words in proper places make the true definition of a style.

There was all the world and his wife.

When men grow virtuous in their old age they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.

Most sorts of diversion in men children and other animals are in imitation of fighting.