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Religion seems to have grown an infant with age, and requires miracles to nurse it, as it had in its infancy.
Jonathan Swift -
Strange an astrologer should die, without one wonder in the sky.
Jonathan Swift
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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.
Jonathan Swift -
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.
Jonathan Swift -
And surely one of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish had been left unsaid.
Jonathan Swift -
Your onions should be thoroughly boiled.
Jonathan Swift -
Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.
Jonathan Swift -
I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.
Jonathan Swift
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It is likewise to be observed that this society hath a peculiar chant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply.
Jonathan Swift -
A favor is half granted, when graciously refused.
Jonathan Swift -
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.
Jonathan Swift -
I must complain the cards are ill shuffled till I have a good hand.
Jonathan Swift -
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.
Jonathan Swift -
Undoubtedly, philosophers are in the right when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.
Jonathan Swift
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A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
Jonathan Swift -
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.
Jonathan Swift -
Surely mortal man is a broomstick!
Jonathan Swift -
It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.
Jonathan Swift -
By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty.
Jonathan Swift -
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.
Jonathan Swift
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We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
Jonathan Swift -
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.
Jonathan Swift -
When we are old, our friends find it difficult to please us, and are less concerned whether we be pleased or not.
Jonathan Swift -
Bread is the staff of life.
Jonathan Swift