Jonathan Swift Quotes
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Vain men delight in telling what Honours have been done them, what great Company they have kept, and the like; by which they plainly confess, that these Honours were more than their Due, and such as their Friends would not believe if they had not been told: Whereas a Man truly proud, thinks the greatest Honours below his Merit, and consequently scorns to boast. I therefore deliver it as a Maxim that whoever desires the Character of a proud Man, ought to conceal his Vanity.
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Patience alleviates, as impatience augments, pain; thus persons of strong will suffer less than those who give way to irritation.
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Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age.
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What vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me, although I am not so old in proportion to them as I formerly was: which I can prove by arithmetic, for then I was double their age, which now I am not. Letter to Alexander Pope. 7 Feb. 1736.
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Observation is an old man's memory.
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In church your grandsire cut his throat; to do the job too long he tarried: he should have had my hearty vote to cut his throat before he married.
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Your onions should be thoroughly boiled.
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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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This made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavor to do himself honor among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him.
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You cannot reason a person out of something they were not reasoned into.
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Arbitrary power is the natural object of temptation to a prince, as wine and women to a young fellow, or a bribe to a judge, or avarice to old age.
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When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.
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Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.
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Live every day as your last, because one of these days, it will be.
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It may pass for a maxim in State, that the administration cannot be placed in too few hands, nor the legislature in too many.
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When dunces are satiric, I take it for a panegyric.
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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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There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
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I used to wonder how a man of birth and spirit could endure to be wholly insignificant and obscure in a foreign country, when he might live with lustre in his own.
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Surely mortal man is a broomstick!
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Lord, Madame, I have fed like a farmer; I shall grow as fat as a porpoise.
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Though fear should lend him pinions like the wind, yet swifter fate will seize him from behind.
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An atheist has got one point beyond the devil.
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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.