Jonathan Swift Quotes
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A ridiculous passion which hath no being but in play-books and romances.
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Pray steal me not, I'm Mrs. Dingley's, Whose heart in this four-footed thing lies.
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Satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any.
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Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.
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One principal object of good-breeding is to suit our behaviour to the three several degrees of men, our superiors, our equals, and those below us.
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Walls have tongues, and hedges ears.
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Big-endians and small-endians.
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Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
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The translators of the Bible were masters of an English style much fitter for that work than any we see in our present writings; the which is owing to the simplicity that runs through the whole.
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And surely one of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish had been left unsaid.
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Some men, under the notion of weeding out prejudice, eradicate virtue, honesty and religion.
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A true critic, in the perusal of a book, is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones.
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T is as cheap sitting as standing.
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You must take the will for the deed.
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Rebukes are easy from our betters, From men of quality and letters; But when low dunces will affront, What man alive can stand the brunt?
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Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.
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There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.
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It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next. "Future ages shall talk of this; they shall be famous to all posterity;" whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now.
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So endless and exorbitant are the desires of men that they will grasp at all, and can form no scheme of perfect happiness with less.
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Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.
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What religion is he of? Why, he is an Anythingarian.
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He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers.
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Life is a tragedy wherein we sit as spectators for a while and then act our part in it.
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There is no quality so contrary to any nature which one cannot affect, and put on upon occasion, in order to serve an interest.
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My hunger serves me instead of a clock.
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The tiny Lilliputians surmise that Gulliver's watch may be his god, because it is that which, he admits, he seldom does anything without consulting.
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Nature has left every man a capacity of being agreeable, though not of shining in company; and there are a hundred men sufficiently qualified for both who, by a very few faults, that they might correct in half an hour, are not so much as tolerable.
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Usually speaking, the worst-bred person in company is a young traveller just returned from abroad.
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When dunces are satiric, I take it for a panegyric.
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Wisdom is a fox who, after long hunting, will at last cost you the pains to dig out; it is a cheese, which, by how much the richer, has the thicker, the homlier, and the coarser coat; and whereof to a judicious palate, the maggots are best. It is a sack posset, wherein the deeper you go, you'll find it the sweeter. Wisdom is a hen, whose cackling we must value and consider, because it is attended with an egg. But lastly, it is a nut, which, unless you choose with judgment, may cost you a tooth, and pay you with nothing but a worm.
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