Letter to Bolingbroke (March 21, 1729), on living in Ireland: 'I reckon no man is thoroughly miserable unless he be condemned to live in Ireland. ... do not let me die in a rage here like a poisoned rat in a hole.’

Letter to Alexander Pope: Swift told Pope that he would be buried at Holyhead since he 'will not lie in a country of slaves’ (Letters, ed. Williams, Vol. 4, p.406.)

Letter to Stella: [...] 'I ever feared the tattle of this nasty town [Dublin], and told you so; there are accidents I life that are necessary and must be submitted to; and tattle, by the help of discretion, will wear off.’

Politics & religion: ‘We are unhappily divided in to two parties, both of which pretend a mighty zeal for our religion and government, only they disagree about the means. The evils we must fence against are, on the one side, fanaticism and infidelity in religion, and anarchy, under the name of the commonwealth, in government; on the other side, popery, slavery, and the Pretender from France .’ (q.source.)

Anglo-Ireland: Swift complained that 'all persons born in Ireland are called and treated as Irishmen , although their fathers and grandfather were born in England; and their predecessors have been conquerors of Ireland, it is humbly conceived they ought to be on as good a foot as any subjects of Britain, according to the practice of all other nations, and particularily the Greeks and Romans.’ (Letter to Lord Peterborough, 28 April 1726).

Roman Catholicism: ‘For Popery, under the Circumstances it lies in this Kingdom; it be although offensive, and inconvenient enough, from the Consequences it hath to increase the Rapine, Sloth and Ignorance, as well as Poverty of the Natives; it is not properly dangerous in that Sense, as some would have us take it; ... The Papists are wholly disarmed. They have neither Courage, Leaders, Money, or Inclinations to rebel.’ (Queries relating to the sacramental test, 1732; Works, ed. Davis, Vol. 12, pp.258-59.)

The Irish Language: ‘It would be a noble achievement to abolish the Irish language in this kingdom, so far at least as to oblige all the natives to speak only English on every occasion of business [...]. This would, in a great measure civilize the most barbarous of them, reconcile them to our customs, and reduce great numbers to the national religion, whatever kind may then happen to be established’ (Works, Vol. 12, p.89).

Hiberno-English: ‘[W]hereas what we call the Irish Brogue is no sooner discovered, than it makes the deliverer, in the last degree, ridiculous and despise; and from such a mouth, an Englishman expects nothing but bulls, blunders and follies.’ ("On Barbarous Denominations in Ireland", in Herbert J. Davis, Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. IV,London: Blackwell 1957; p.281; quoted in Martin J. Croghan, 'Maria Edgeworth and the Tradition of Irish Semiotics’, in Donald E. Morse, et al., eds., A Small Nation’s Contribution to the World, Colin Smythe, 1993, pp.194-206.)

Letter to Charles Wogan (1732), on the Native Irish gentry: 'Yet I cannot but highly esteem those gentlemen of Ireland, who with all the disadvantages of being exiles and strangers, have been able to distinguish themselves by their valour and conduct in so many parts of Europe, I think above all other nations, which ought to make the English ashamed of the reproaches they cast on the ignorance, the dullness, and the want of courage, in the Irish natives [...]  I do assert from several experiments I have made in travelling over both kingdoms, I have found much better natural taste for good sense, humour, raillery, than I ever observed among people of the like sort in England. But the millions of oppressions they lie under, the tyranny of their landlords, the ridiculous zeal of their priests, and the general misery of the whole nation, have been enough to damp the best spirits under the sun.' (Rep. in Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing , 1991; quoted thence in in P. J. Kavanagh, Voices in Ireland , 1994, p.8.)