Jonathan Swift, pen names, M.B. Drapier, Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff

Health is the greatest of all possessions; a pale cobbler is better than a sick king.

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.

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

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.

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.

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.

May you live all the days of your life.

No wise person ever wished to be younger.

The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclined men in the course of virtue, but seldom or never reclaims the vicious.

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.

Abstracts, abridgments, summaries, etc., have the same use with burning-glasses - to collect the diffused rays of wit and learning in authors, and make them point with warmth and quickness upon the reader’s imagination.

Kitchen physic is the best physic.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.

Our Knowledge is but mere Remembrance all, Remembrance is our Treasure and our Food.

There is nothing so extravagant and irrational which some philosophers have not maintained for truth.

When we desire or solicit any thing, our minds run wholly on the good side or circumstances of it; when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad ones.

Wisdom is a fox who, after long hunting, will at last cost you the pains to dig out; it is a cheese, which, by how much the richer, has the thicker, the homelier, and the coarser coat; and whereof to a judicious palate, the maggots are best. It is a sack posset, wherein the deeper you go, you’ll find it the sweeter. Wisdom is a hen, whose cackling we must value and consider, because it is attended with an egg. But lastly, it is a nut, which, unless you choose with judgment, may cost you a tooth, and pay you with nothing but a worm.

Men always grow vicious before they become unbelievers.

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

Men are contented to be laughed at for their wit, but not for their folly.

Nothing more unqualifies a man to act iwth prudence, than a misfortune that is attended with shame and guilt.

Perpetual aiming at wit is a very bad part of conversation. It is done to support a character: it generally fails; it is a sort of insult on the company, and a restraint upon the speaker.

Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.