Talk:Jonathan Swift

Unsourced
Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable, precise and verifiable source for any quote on this list please move it to Jonathan Swift. --Antiquary 17:58, 14 May 2009 (UTC)


 * A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.


 * The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier."


 * Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping.


 * In church your grandsire cut his throat; to do the job too long he tarried: he should have had my hearty vote to cut his throat before he married.


 * Faith! he must make his stories shorter or change his comrades once a quarter.


 * Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.


 * Every dog must have his day.


 * I have always believed no matter how many shots I miss, I'm going to make the next one.


 * (On leaving money to found a psychiatric hospital in Dublin) No nation needs it so much.

The page reference given is to an unsourced compendium of quotes. http://books.google.com/books?id=C4JZAAAAMAAJ&q=useless#v=onepage&q=433&f=false Jbgfour (talk) 11:39, 26 July 2014 (UTC) 'this quotation is not traced in Swift's works, and is thus probably apocryphal' http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780191735240.001.0001/q-oro-00010553 Jbgfour (talk) 12:47, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
 * "It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."