As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.

And he gave it for his opinion, “that whoever 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...

who have spent the greatest part of your life in travelling, I am well disposed to hope you may hitherto have escaped many vices of your country. But by what I have gathered from your...

Díjele que entre nosotros existía una sociedad de hombres educados desde su juventud en el arte de probar con palabras multiplicadas al efecto que lo blanco es negro y lo negro es blanco, según para...

It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.

Gulliver describes a royal personage inspiring awe among the tiny Lilliputians because he was taller than his brethren by the breadth of a human fingernail.

We of this age have discovered a shorter, and more prudent method to become scholars and wits, without the fatigue of reading or of thinking.

that every senator in the great council of a nation, after he had delivered his opinion, and argued in the defence of it, should be obliged to give his vote directly contrary; because if that...

Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.

These reasonings will furnish us with an adequate definition of a true critic: that he is a discoverer and collector of writers’ faults. Which may be farther put beyond dispute by the following demonstration: that...

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

take a strict view of their excrements, and, from the colour, the odour, the taste, the consistence, the crudeness or maturity of digestion, form a judgment of their thoughts and designs; because men are never...

When a great genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”[Thoughts on Various Subjects]

If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.

Here commences a new dominion acquired with a title by divine right. Ships are sent with the first opportunity; the natives driven out or destroyed; their princes tortured to discover their gold; a free license...

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed,...

A sort of animals, to whose share, […] some small pittance of reason had fallen, whereof we made no other use, than to aggravate our natural corruptions, and to acquire new ones, which nature had...

Every dog must have his day.

I replied that England (the dear place of my nativity) was computed to produce three times the quantity of food, more than its inhabitants are able to consume, … But, in order to feed the...

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.

When the world has once begun to use us ill, it afterwards continues the same treatment with less scruple or ceremony, as men do to a whore.

He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.

Judges… are picked out from the most dextrous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy, and having been biased all their lives against truth or equity, are under such a fatal necessity of favoring fraud,...

But by what I have gathered from your own relation, and the answers I have with much pains wrung and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the...

There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof Ihope there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am notunderstood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profoundis...

As learnèd commentators viewIn Homer more than Homer knew.

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

I have one word to say upon the subject of profound writers, who are grown very numerous of late; and I know very well the judicious world is resolved to list me in that number....

That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.

May you live every day of your life.

They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man’s...