Jonathan Swift Quotes
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Bachelor's fare: bread and cheese, and kisses.
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Although the devil be the father of lies, he seems, like other great inventors, to have lost much of his reputation by the continual improvements that have been made upon him.
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The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word.
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Just get the right syllable in the proper place.
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With a whirl of thought oppressed I sink from reverie to rest. An horrid vision seized my head, I saw the graves give up their dead.
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Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters.
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Whence proceeds this weight we lay On what detracting people say? Their utmost malice cannot make Your head, or tooth, or finger ache; Nor spoil your shapes, distort your face, Or put one feature out of place.
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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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Hail fellow, well met.
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I never knew any man cured of inattention.
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Come hither, all ye empty things, Ye bubbles rais'd by breath of Kings; Who float upon the tide of state, Come hither, and behold your fate. Let pride be taught by this rebuke, How very mean a thing's a Duke; From all his ill-got honours flung, Turn'd to that dirt from whence he sprung.
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It is the first rule in oratory that a man must appear such as he would persuade others to be: and that can be accomplished only by the force of his life.
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If you were not reasoned into your beliefs, you cannot be reasoned out of them.
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He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
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Possession, they say, is eleven points of the law.
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In all assemblies, though you wedge them ever so close, we may observe this peculiar property, that over their heads there is room enough; but how to reach it is the difficult point. To this end the philosopher's way in all ages has been by erecting certain edifices in the air.
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I row after health like a waterman.
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Ale is meat, drink and cloth; it will make a cat speak and a wise man dumb.
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What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.
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Hobbes clearly proves, that every creature Lives in a state of war by nature.
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Strange an astrologer should die, without one wonder in the sky.
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That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.
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There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.
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If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.