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Though fear should lend him pinions like the wind, yet swifter fate will seize him from behind.
Jonathan Swift -
Men of wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.
Jonathan Swift
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It is computed that eleven thousand persons have at several times suffered death rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end.
Jonathan Swift -
If a lump of soot falls into the soup and you cannot conveniently get it out, stir it well in and it will give the soup a French taste.
Jonathan Swift -
I have now lost my barrier between me and death; God grant I may live to be as well prepared for it, as I confidently believe her to have been! If the way to Heaven be through piety, truth, justice and charity, she is there.
Jonathan Swift -
Every dog must have his day.
Jonathan Swift -
For in that universal call, Few bankers will to heaven be mounters; They'll cry, "Ye shops, upon us fall! Conceal and cover us, ye counters! When other hands the scales shall hold, And they, in men's and angels' sight Produced with all their bills and gold, 'Weigh'd in the balance and found light!'
Jonathan Swift -
She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork.
Jonathan Swift
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Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
Jonathan Swift -
I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
Jonathan Swift -
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.
Jonathan Swift -
Let a man be ne'er so wise, he may be caught with sober lies.
Jonathan Swift -
Nothing more unqualified the man to act with prudence than a misfortune that is attended with shame and guilt.
Jonathan Swift -
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?
Jonathan Swift
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Live every day as your last, because one of these days, it will be.
Jonathan Swift -
It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.
Jonathan Swift -
By the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your country you are and ought to be as free a people as your brethren in England.
Jonathan Swift -
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.
Jonathan Swift -
There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
Jonathan Swift -
Pray steal me not, I'm Mrs. Dingley's, Whose heart in this four-footed thing lies.
Jonathan Swift
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Brisk talkers are usually slow thinkers. There is, indeed, no wild beast more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate. If you are civil to the voluble they will abuse your patience; if brusque, your character.
Jonathan Swift -
Come, agree, the law's costly.
Jonathan Swift -
Judges... are picked out from the most dextrous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy, and having been biased all their lives against truth or equity, are under such a fatal necessity of favoring fraud, perjury and oppression, that I have known several of them to refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty by doing any thing unbecoming their nature in office.
Jonathan Swift -
Few are qualified to shine in company, but it is in most men's power to be agreeable.
Jonathan Swift