Jonathan Swift

"We have as much power as we think we have."

"We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst."

"What they do in heaven we are told, is to go on doing what they have been doing on earth, only with the difference that they do it all the time and with complete success."

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

"When you see the world as it really is, you understand why some people choose madness."

"Wherever there is excessive wealth, there is also in the hiding, excessive poverty."

"Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved."

"Words are like leaves; and where they most abound, much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found."

"Writing is bliss when you're not struggling to earn money."

"You cannot be both fashionable and first-rate."

"You will never be alone with a schizophrenic."

"Your body is a wonderland of sensations and appetites."

"A man of sense is never long moped by the affecting circumstances."

"Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great."

"A smart man may be an ass in his affairs."

"Ambition is a lust that is never quenched, but grows more inflamed and madder by enjoyment."

"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest."

"Anger is a short madness."

"Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty."

"As universal a language as possible ought to be the aim of philosophers."

"Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good; a flower that fades and dies."

"Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed."

"Bread is the staff of life."

"Change is the only constant in life."

"Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice."

"Death is a debt we all must pay."

"Envy will merit as its shade pursue."

"Flattery is a base coin that no man ought to take."

"Fortune shows her power chiefly in times of change."

"Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."