Jonathan Swift Quotes

Of Adam and Eve: They had what they wanted. That they did not like it when they got it does not alter the fact that they certainly got it.

It doesn't matter what you're chasing, when you get there you're gonna be like, "Oh, is this all? It kind of sucks."

Upon the whole, therefore, she found what had been sometimes found before, that an event to which she had looked forward with impatient desire, did not, in taking place, bring all the satisfaction she had promised herself.

He soon felt that the fulfillment of his desires gave him only one grain of the mountain of happiness he had expected. This fulfillment showed him the eternal error men make in imagining that their happiness depends on the realization of their desires.

Fun... human nature... does no one any harm... Regular as clockwork the old excuses came back into the alert, sad and dissatisfied brain--nothing ever matched the deep excitement of the regular desire. Men always failed you when it came to the act. She might just as well have been to the pictures.

More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.

As a general rule, people disappoint you as you know them.

We are never further from what we wish than when we believe that we have what we wished for.

People don't understand what happiness is, so they have an idea of what will make them happy, but it never does.

When all of your wishes are granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed.

We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.

After you get what you want you don't want it.

Some people will always be disappointed.

Most of us...are naturally more sanguine and hopeful than logic would justify. We seem to be so constituted that in the absence of any facts to go upon we are happy and self-satisfied; so that the effect of experience is continually to contract our hopes and aspirations

Not many people get that 'happily ever after' they want in life. There are disappointments every step of the way, no matter how hard one strives for the best.

Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?

Mind the gap - it's the distance between life as you dream it and life as it is.

It is perfectly possible to get what you think you want and be miserable. It's possible too, to never get it but deeply enjoy the process of trying. In this world, there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

Its really most remarkable how the human race is so seldom satisfied with what its got. Give a man the world and he's pining for the moon.

I finally had what I'd wantes all those years. Except now that I had it, i felt as empty as this unkempt pool I was dangling my legs into.

In happy ignorance, I sighed for a world I did not know, where I hoped to find every pleasure and enjoyment which my heart could desire; and now, on my return from that wide world... how many disappointed hopes and unsuccessful plans have I brought back!

The ego wants to want more than it wants to have. And so the shallow satisfaction of having is always replaced by more wanting.

What does not satisfy when we find it, was not the thing we were desiring.

That in all these worldly Things, that a Man pursues with the greatest Eagerness and Intention of Mind imaginable, he finds not half the Pleasure in the actual Possession of them, that he proposed to himself in the Expectation.

We get caught. How? Not by what we give but by what we expect. We get misery in return for our love: not from the fact that we love but from the fact that we want love in return. There is no misery where there is no want. Desire, want, is the father of all misery. Desires are bound by the laws of success and failure. Desires must bring misery.