Jonathan Swift Quotes

You have to appear wiser and more prudent than is required by the people you are dealing with if you want to give a high opinion of yourself.

The fool inherits, but the wise must get.

Fools give you reasons, wise men never try.

If you have a great part, you have the opportunity to give a good performance. The greatest actors get the best parts, and the best parts make the greatest actors. There are plenty of people who are as talented, who just never got the part.

Wisdom triumphs over chance.

Wisdom is the winner over good luck.

True luck consists not in holding the best of the cards at the table; luckiest is he who knows just when to rise and go home.

Imprudence relies on luck, prudence on method. That gives prudence less edge than it expects.

Indifference is commonly the mother of discretion.

The wise hand does not all the tongue dictates.

What good is power when you're too wise to use it?

To succeed in the world we must look foolish but be wise.

Oh yeah, I'm the president of the lucky club. There are so many talented people who don't work. And the crop of young actors I'm surrounded by is incredible. When you have people like that around you it amps you up a little bit. Also, Emile Hirsch and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, or guys like Ryan Gosling. It's a really good crowd and I feel I'm coming up at a good time. But equally, there's a lot of good young actors who don't get to work who are more talented than I. I'm just lucky.

Women can feel inspired by the story. People who haven't been traditionally given a chance to use their skills or shine are given a chance, and they prevail.

We easily enough confess in others an advantage of courage, strength, experience, activity, and beauty; but an advantage in judgment we yield to none.

You see people who get so many big opportunities, and they take them, and they're not ready.

My recipe for success is chance, basically. Just luck. It's a miracle that people still hire me after some of the stuff I've gotten away with. Honestly!

Silence is the only answer you should give to the fools. Where ignorance speaks, intelligence should not give advices.

I've found that what most people call luck is often little more than raw talent combined with the ability to make the most of opportunities. (Talon Karrde)

I have often heard, that it is safer to hear and to take counsel, than to give it.

I suppose that people, using themselves and each other so much by words, are at least consistent in attributing wisdom to a still tongue.

I had the good fortune early on to cast some really great people that were not just characters, they had character.

You shall learn, though late, the lesson of how to be discreet.