Did Jonathan Swift say "A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart"?

Q: Did Jonathan Swift say "A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart"?

Yes. Jonathan Swift wrote it in a letter to Henry St John, Lord Bolingbroke, dated 5 April 1729, telling him he had made a maxim "that a wise man ought to have money in his head, but not in his heart." The letter is printed in The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Vol. 14 and in the 1808 Works (ed. Sheridan & Nichols) at p.380. Modern quotation clips his "ought to have" to "should have."

Who really said it

A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart

Written by Jonathan Swift 1667–1745

Verified Free to reuse

Jonathan Swift wrote it in a letter to Henry St John, Lord Bolingbroke, dated 5 April 1729, telling him he had made a maxim “that a wise man ought to have money in his head, but not in his heart.” The letter is printed in The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Vol. 14 and in the 1808 Works (ed. Sheridan & Nichols) at p.380. Modern quotation clips his “ought to have” to “should have.”

Last verified 16 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Verified quote & credit

“A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart” — Jonathan Swift, letter to Lord Bolingbroke, 5 April 1729

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In context

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Provenance

The source

Written by: Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
Source: Letter to Henry St John, Lord Bolingbroke, 5 April 1729
Primary source: The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Vol. 14; 1808 Works (ed. Sheridan & Nichols) p.380
Status: Verified — popularly clipped from “ought to have”

… I have made a maxim, that should be writ in letters of diamonds, that a wise man ought to have money in his head, but not in his heart.

Swift’s own words, from his 5 April 1729 letter to Lord Bolingbroke. The familiar “should have” version is a modern clipping of his “ought to have.”

The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Vol. 14 — letter to Lord Bolingbroke, 5 April 1729

How we checked

The line is absent from Wikiquote’s Jonathan Swift page — it appears in neither the sourced, disputed, nor misattributed sections.
It does not appear in Swift’s aphorism collection Thoughts on Various Subjects, whose genuine money maxims are worded quite differently.
Quote-aggregator sites such as BrainyQuote and Due present it as Swift’s with no citation whatsoever.

Public domain

This is a genuine Jonathan Swift text: written in his 1729 letter to Lord Bolingbroke and printed in his collected Works by 1808. Swift died in 1745, so the wording is firmly in the public domain and free to reuse.

Fact-check

Genuinely Swift — with one word clipped

The attribution is correct: Swift really did write this, in a 1729 letter to Lord Bolingbroke. The only thing worth flagging is the wording — the version everyone shares quietly clips his “ought to have” down to “should have.”

Popular clipping wording drift

Swift wrote “a wise man ought to have money in his head, but not in his heart” in his 5 April 1729 letter to Lord Bolingbroke. The version in circulation clips “ought to have” to “should have” — the sense is unchanged, but it is not quite his words.

An online retelling unverified

Swift’s letter to Bolingbroke is genuine and documented. The further flourish — that Bolingbroke wrote back a matching reply about money reaching the heart — circulates in unsourced restatements and cannot be confirmed from the primary correspondence; treat that part with caution.

The honest verdict: Swift really did write this — in his 5 April 1729 letter to Lord Bolingbroke — and modern quotation simply clips his “ought to have” to “should have.”

Context

Why it mattered

Swift is one of the internet’s biggest quote magnets, so plenty of money maxims get pinned on him with no basis. This one is different: it really is his, tucked into a 1729 letter to his friend Lord Bolingbroke rather than any published essay.

The head-versus-heart framing (be shrewd about money, don’t let it rule you) reads like modern personal-finance advice, which is part of why people assume it must be a later invention. It isn’t — Swift wrote “ought to have money in his head, but not in his heart,” and the familiar “should have” is just a clipped retelling.

His own words — from a 1729 letter, lightly clipped.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Wisdom Simplicity

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Wikiquote: Jonathan Swiften.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote’s curated Swift list; it happens not to include this letter-maxim, but the line is genuine — see the correspondence.

Thoughts on Various Subjects (full text)essays.quotidiana.org

Swift’s actual aphorism collection; his genuine money maxims, none matching this line.

The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Vol. 14 (correspondence)en.wikisource.org

Swift’s 5 April 1729 letter to Lord Bolingbroke, where the maxim actually appears.

Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Divertingen.wikipedia.org

Background on Swift’s epigrams; this particular maxim comes from his correspondence rather than this collection.

BrainyQuote listingbrainyquote.com

A typical aggregator entry: the correct Swift credit, but in the clipped “should have” form and with no source given.

The author

Who wrote it

Jonathan Swift

1667–1745 · Anglo-Irish satirist, cleric & poet

Jonathan Swift was the Dublin-born Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral and the age’s greatest prose satirist, author of Gulliver’s Travels, A Modest Proposal and A Tale of a Tub. He did write pointed aphorisms about money — his Thoughts on Various Subjects includes lines such as “No man will take counsel, but every man will take money.” This head-versus-heart maxim is one more of them — written not in an essay but in a 1729 letter to his friend Lord Bolingbroke.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Jonathan Swift to Henry St John, Lord Bolingbroke, letter of 5 April 1729, in The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Vol. 14; also printed in the 1808 Works (ed. Sheridan & Nichols) at p.380 — the edition AZQuotes cites. The circulating “should have” wording is a modern clipping of Swift’s “ought to have.”

MLA (9th ed.)

Swift, Jonathan. “Letter to Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke, 5 April 1729.” The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, edited by Thomas Sheridan and John Nichols, vol. 14, 1808, p. 380.

APA (7th ed.)

Swift, J. (1808). Letter to Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke [Letter written 5 April 1729]. In T. Sheridan & J. Nichols (Eds.), The works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift (Vol. 14, p. 380).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart’?” Last verified 16 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/a-wise-man-should-have-money-in-his-head-but-not-in-his