Jonathan Swift Quotes
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A favor is half granted, when graciously refused.
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Lord, Madame, I have fed like a farmer; I shall grow as fat as a porpoise.
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Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age.
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Conscience signifies that knowledge which a man hath of his own thoughts and actions; and because, if a man judgeth fairly of his actions by comparing them with the law of God, his mind will approve or condemn him; this knowledge or conscience may be both an accuser and a judge.
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He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
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It is as hard to satirize well a man of distinguished vices, as to praise well a man of distinguished virtues.
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There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
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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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Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters.
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Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.
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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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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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... the atheists, libertines, despisers of religion ... that is to say all those who usually pass under the name of Free-thinkers.
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A maxim in law has more weight in the world than an article of faith.
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A forward critic often dupes us With sham quotations peri hupsos, And if we have not read Longinus, Will magisterially outshine us. Then, lest with Greek he over-run ye, Procure the book for love or money, Translated from Boileau's translation, And quote quotation on quotation.
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It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.
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Don't set your wit against a child.
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I must complain the cards are ill shuffled till I have a good hand.
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It is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they are employed on as when they have lost their edge.
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Strange an astrologer should die, without one wonder in the sky.
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Seamen have a custom, when they meet a whale, to fling him out an empty tub by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the ship.
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If they would, for Example, praise the Beauty of a Woman, or any other Animal, they describe it by Rhombs, Circles, Parallelograms, Ellipses, and other geometrical terms.
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The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
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When dunces are satiric, I take it for a panegyric.