Jonathan Swift Quotes: Sources, Meanings & Themes
Browse quotations by Jonathan Swift with named works, context notes, meanings and recurring themes.
Source identified1
Image design Lavender
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“Undoubtedly philosophers are in the right, when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.”
Meaning & context
Gulliver observes that judgments of size depend on a point of comparison, a lesson made vivid when his own body shifts from giant-scale in Lilliput to tiny scale in Brobdingnag.
Source details
Gulliver's Travels, Part II, Chapter I, Project Gutenberg #829. Lemuel Gulliver reflects that nothing is great or little except by comparison after finding himself tiny among the inhabitants of Brobdingnag, reversing his earlier giant-scale experience in Lilliput. This is fictional first-person satire and perspective play, not a universal philosophical proof.
Source identified2
Image design Rose Studio
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“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own;”
Meaning & context
Swift jokes that readers readily recognize other people in satire while overlooking themselves, making self-exemption part of the very behavior satire exposes.
Source details
The Battle of the Books, 'The Preface of the Author,' represented by Project Gutenberg #623. Swift's 'satire is a sort of glass' image opens the Preface and explains why readers recognize other people's faults more readily than their own. The retained semicolon marks a frozen excerpt from a longer sentence; this is satirical/literary metaphor rather than a psychological measurement rule.
Source identified3
Image design Botanical Sage
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“Every man desires to live long; but no man would be old.”
Meaning & context
Swift compresses a familiar contradiction into satire: people may desire a long life while resisting the aging that necessarily accompanies it.
Source details
Thoughts on Various Subjects, c. 1713, Wikisource transcription. The aphorism is a satirical paradox about longevity and aging, not advice to fear or devalue old age.