Jonathan Swift Quotes
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This Day, whate'er the Fates decree; Shall still be kept with Joy by me: This Day then, let us not be told, That you are sick, and I grown old
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Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.
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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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There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them.
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"Lawyers Are": Those whose interests and abilities lie in perverting, confounding and eluding the law.
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Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.
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You cannot reason a person out of something they were not reasoned into.
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Books, like men their authors, have no more than one wayofcoming intothe world, but there areten thousand to go out of it, and return no more.
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Story-telling is subject to two unavoidable defects,--frequent repetition and being soon exhausted; so that, whoever values this gift in himself, has need of a good memory, and ought frequently to shift his company.
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Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together; Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.
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She watches him as a cat would watch a mouse.
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When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.
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Bread is the staff of life.
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There is no talent so useful toward rising in the world, or which puts men more out of the reach of fortune, than that quality generally possessed by the dullest sort of men, and in common speech called discretion; a species of lower prudence, by the assistance of which, people of the meanest intellectuals, without any other qualification, pass through the world in great tranquillity, and with universal good treatment, neither giving nor taking offence.
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A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
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How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice when they will not so much as take warning.
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When we are old, our friends find it difficult to please us, and are less concerned whether we be pleased or not.
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Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
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All Pretences of foretelling by Astrology, are Deceits; for this manifest Reason, because the Wise and Learned, who can only judge whether there be any Truth in this Science, do all unanimously agree to laugh at and despise it; and none but the poor ignorant Vulgar give it any Credit.
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I used to wonder how a man of birth and spirit could endure to be wholly insignificant and obscure in a foreign country, when he might live with lustre in his own.
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The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little.
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My father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the Third of five Sons.
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They say fish should swim thrice * * * first it should swim in the sea (do you mind me?) then it should swim in butter, and at last, sirrah, it should swim in good claret.
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Books, the children of the brain.