Jonathan Swift

"Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."

"Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken."

"The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter and a scarcity of words."

"Borrowed wit is not worth much."

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

"It is in my opinion the greatest happiness of my life to have obtained the first place in your esteem."

"A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart."

"The thunder is good, and the rain is good; but they are better when they go in company."

"Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others."

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

"True friendship is a plant of slow growth."

"Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and orators, because he that would have people believe him is unwise to seem to doubt it himself."

"No wise man ever wished to be younger."

"The greatest malady of friendship is gradual decay and secret alienation."

"There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy."

"Books are the quietest and most constant of friends."

"Argument is the worst sort of conversation."

"The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes."

"A man of sense can see through the greatest of disguises that passion may wear."

"The power of imagination makes us infinite."

"A woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs."

"I have lived long enough to see that life is not a tragedy, but a comedy."

"Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue that it is always respected."

"Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable."

"Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not excused."

"The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow."

"I never knew a critic who was not an ass."

"Men are happiest when they are most free."

"The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word."

"Clever people are good at finding reasons to explain why something they forgot or failed at wasn't really their fault."