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Complaint is the largest tribute heaven receives and the sincerest part of our devotion.
Jonathan Swift -
Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
Jonathan Swift
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Whoe'er excels in what we prize, Appears a hero in our eyes; Each girl, when pleased with what is taught, Will have the teacher in her thought. . . . . A blockhead with melodious voice, In boarding-schools may have his choice.
Jonathan Swift -
It often happens that, if a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done its work, and there is no further occasion for it.
Jonathan Swift -
Nothing is so great an instance of ill-manners as flattery.
Jonathan Swift -
Ay, do despise me, I'm the prouder for it; I like to be despised.
Jonathan Swift -
The various opinions of philosophers have scattered through the world as many plagues of the mind as Pandora's box did those of the body; only with this difference, that they have not left hope at the bottom.
Jonathan Swift -
I always love to begin a journey on Sundays, because I shall have the prayers of the church to preserve all that travel by land, or water.
Jonathan Swift
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Arbitrary power is the natural object of temptation to a prince, as wine and women to a young fellow, or a bribe to a judge, or avarice to old age.
Jonathan Swift -
Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
Jonathan Swift -
Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
Jonathan Swift -
It is in disputes as in armies, where the weaker side sets up false lights, and makes a great noise, to make the enemy believe them more numerous and strong than they really are.
Jonathan Swift -
Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.
Jonathan Swift -
I love white Portugal wine better than claret, champagne, or burgundy. I have a sad vulgar appetite.
Jonathan Swift
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War: that mad game the world so loves to play.
Jonathan Swift -
Punning is a talent which no man affects to despise but he that is without it.
Jonathan Swift -
Physicians ought not to give their judgment of religion, for the same reason that butchers are not admitted to be jurors upon life and death.
Jonathan Swift -
I've often wish'd that I had clear, For life, six hundred pounds a year; A handsome house to lodge a friend; A river at my garden's end; A terrace walk, and half a rood Of land set out to plant a wood.
Jonathan Swift -
What religion is he of? Why, he is an Anythingarian.
Jonathan Swift -
"Lawyers Are": Those whose interests and abilities lie in perverting, confounding and eluding the law.
Jonathan Swift
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You must take the will for the deed.
Jonathan Swift -
When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the good side or circumstances of it; when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad ones.
Jonathan Swift -
The more careless, the more modish.
Jonathan Swift -
Though fear should lend him pinions like the wind, yet swifter fate will seize him from behind.
Jonathan Swift