Jonathan Swift Quotes
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I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.
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Few are qualified to shine in company, but it is in most men's power to be agreeable.
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One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.
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An atheist has got one point beyond the devil.
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Nothing is so great an instance of ill-manners as flattery.
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When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the good side or circumstances of it; when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad ones.
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We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
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You cannot reason a person out of something they were not reasoned into.
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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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Don't set your wit against a child.
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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 are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
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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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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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Pray steal me not, I'm Mrs. Dingley's, Whose heart in this four-footed thing lies.
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You must take the will for the deed.
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A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
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Love why do we one passion call, When 'tis a compound of them all? Where hot and cold, where sharp and sweet, In all their equipages meet; Where pleasures mix'd with pains appear, Sorrow with joy, and hope with fear.
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From not the gravest of Divines, Accept for once some serious Lines.
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Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
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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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Neither are any wars so furious and bloody, or of so long continuance as those occasioned by difference in opinion, especially if it be in things indifferent.
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There seems to be no part of knowledge in fewer hands than that of discerning when to have done.
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Bread is the staff of life.