Jonathan Swift

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.

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.

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

But you think. . . that it is time for me to have done with the world, and so I would if I could get into a better before I was called into the best, and not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.

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.

The sight of you is good for sore eyes.

'T is as cheap sitting as standing.

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

Instead of dirt and poison we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax; thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.

There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.