Jonathan Swift Quotes
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Walls have tongues, and hedges ears.
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Oh how our neighbour lifts his nose, To tell what every schoolboy knows.
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Praise is the daughter of present power.
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Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.
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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.
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A Child will make two Dishes at an Entertainment for Friends; and when the Family dines alone, the fore or hind Quarter will makea reasonable Dish; and seasoned with a little Pepper or Salt, will be very good Boiled on the fourth Day, especially in Winter.
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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.
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If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.
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Every age might perhaps produce one or two geniuses, if they were not sunk under the censure and obloquy of plodding, servile, imitating pedants.
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Dignity, high station, or great riches, are in some sort necessary to old men, in order to keep the younger at a distance, who are otherwise too apt to insult them upon the score of their age.
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I love good creditable acquaintance; I love to be the worst of the company.
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Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.
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Men always grow vicious before they become unbelievers.
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There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof, I hope, there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am not understood, it shall be concluded, that something very useful and profound is couched underneath; and again, that whatever word or sentence is printed in a different character, shall be judged to contain something extraordinary either or wit of sublime.
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Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.
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Philosophy! the lumber of the schools.
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I have known some men possessed of good qualities which were very serviceable to others, but useless to themselves; like a sun-dial on the front of a house, to inform the neighbours and passengers, but not the owner within.
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In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.
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There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.
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Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
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Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
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No man of honor, as the word is usually understood, did ever pretend that his honor obliged him to be chaste or temperate, to pay his creditors, to be useful to his country, to do good to mankind, to endeavor to be wise or learned, to regard his word, his promise, or his oath.
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Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone.
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Just get the right syllable in the proper place.