Jonathan Swift Quotes
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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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Philosophy! the lumber of the schools.
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The tiny Lilliputians surmise that Gulliver's watch may be his god, because it is that which, he admits, he seldom does anything without consulting.
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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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Just get the right syllable in the proper place.
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Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.
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No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore, money is better than counsel.
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Hereditary right should be kept sacred, not from any inalienable right in a particular family, but to avoid the consequences that usually attend the ambition of competitors.
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I row after health like a waterman.
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Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone.
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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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He that calls a man ungrateful sums up all the veil that a man can be guilty of.
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Such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up.
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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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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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I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.
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Possession, they say, is eleven points of the law.
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Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them; as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like a face on the wall or the wainscot can, by two or three touches with a lead pencil, make it look visible, and agreeing with what he fancied.
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This wine should be eaten, it is too good to be drunk.
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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 talent of human nature to run from one extreme to another.
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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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I cannot but conclude that the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.
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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.