Swift Quotes

Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate. (Søren Kierkegaard)
Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity. View quote
Henry van Dyke
Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind. View quote
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy. View quote
Marie Curie
Wanted: a needle swift enough to sew this poem into a blanket. View quote
Charles Simic
Love grows more tremendously full, swift, poignant, as the years multiply. View quote
Zane Grey
A swift carriage, of a dark night, rattling with four horses over roads that one can't see--that's my idea of happiness. View quote
Henry James
Trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay. View quote
Samuel Johnson
For the first time in human evolution, the individual life is long enough, and the cultural transformation swift enough, that the individual mind is now a constituent player in the global transformation of human culture. View quote
William Irwin Thompson
Swift blazing flag of the regiment, Eagle with crest of red and gold, These men were born to drill and die. Point for them the virtue of slaughter, Make plain to them the excellence of killing And a field where a thousand corpses lie. View quote
Stephen Crane
You complain, friend Swift, of the length of my epigrams, but you yourself write nothing. Yours are shorter. (Martial)
Love is swift, sincere, pious, pleasant, gentle, strong, patient, faithful, prudent, long-suffering, manly and never seeking her own; for whosoever a man seeketh his own, there he falleth from love. View quote
Thomas à Kempis
Autumn to winter, winter into spring, Spring into summer, summer into fall,-- So rolls the changing year, and so we change; Motion so swift, we know not that we move. View quote
Dinah Craik
The beast for me is greed. Whether you read Dante, Swift, or any of these guys, it always boils down to the same thing: the corruption of the soul. View quote
Ben Nicholson
Let those who think the soul is shallow rail, They must be warned before they dare to leap They'll plunge into the twilight depths where sweep In ceaseless thirst great teeth too swift to fail. View quote
Philip José Farmer
I think the satirist is always basically optimistic. The satirist's complaint about society is always that it doesn't measure up to a fairly high ideal he has. I think that even the bitterest satirist, even a man like Swift, was probably rather an optimist at heart. View quote
John Dos Passos
Farewell, my great one, my own, farewell, my pride, farewell, my swift, deep, dear river, how I loved your daylong splashing, how I loved to plunge into your cold waves. View quote
Boris Pasternak
The slender, swift Bruce Lee was the Fred Astaire of martial arts, and many of the fights that could be merely brutal come across as lightning-fast choreography. View quote
Pauline Kael
Ah! what is human life? How, like the dial's tardy-moving shade, Day after day slides from us unperceiv'd! The cunning fugitive is swift by stealth; Too subtle is the movement to be seen; Yet soon the hour is up--and we are gone. View quote
Edward Young
When the dead do walk seek water's run, for this the Dead will always shun. Swift river's best or broadest lake to ward the dead and have and make. If water fails thee, fire's thy friend, if neither guards it will be thy end. View quote
Garth Nix
You would not serve junk food at a banquet, and your book must be a banquet. Get your language from Swift, not from Shopsy's. (Robertson Davies)
His golden locks Time hath to silver turned, O time too swift! O swiftness never ceasing! His youth 'gainst Time and Age hath ever spurned, But spurned in vain! Youth waneth by increasing. View quote
George Peele
Sweet, can I sing you the song of your kisses? How soft is this one, how subtle this is, How fluttering swift as a bird's kiss that is, As a bird that taps at a leafy lattice; How this one clings and how that uncloses From bud to flower in the way of roses. View quote
Arthur Symons
I have nowhere to go. The swift satellites show The clock of my whole being is slow. View quote
R. S. Thomas
Men wrongly lament the flight of time, blaming it for being too swift; they do not perceive that its passage is sufficiently long, but a good memory, which nature has given to us, causes things long past to seem present. View quote
Leonardo da Vinci
📖 Swift Proverbs