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Books, the children of the brain.
Jonathan Swift -
A stander-by may sometimes, perhaps, see more of the game than he that plays it.
Jonathan Swift
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Flattery is the worst and falsest way of showing our esteem.
Jonathan Swift -
A lie is an excuse guarded.
Jonathan Swift -
An atheist has got one point beyond the devil.
Jonathan Swift -
Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone.
Jonathan Swift -
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.
Jonathan Swift -
You cannot reason a person out of something they were not reasoned into.
Jonathan Swift
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We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
Jonathan Swift -
Perverseness is your whole defence.
Jonathan Swift -
All Pretences of foretelling by Astrology, are Deceits; for this manifest Reason, because the Wise and Learned, who can only judge whether there be any Truth in this Science, do all unanimously agree to laugh at and despise it; and none but the poor ignorant Vulgar give it any Credit.
Jonathan Swift -
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
Jonathan Swift -
Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers because, whoever shares his thoughts with the public will convince them as he himself appears convinced.
Jonathan Swift -
This wine should be eaten, it is too good to be drunk.
Jonathan Swift
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I'll give you leave to call me anything, if you don't call me spade.
Jonathan Swift -
Story-telling is subject to two unavoidable defects,--frequent repetition and being soon exhausted; so that, whoever values this gift in himself, has need of a good memory, and ought frequently to shift his company.
Jonathan Swift -
She watches him as a cat would watch a mouse.
Jonathan Swift -
From not the gravest of Divines, Accept for once some serious Lines.
Jonathan Swift -
One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.
Jonathan Swift -
Ever eating, never cloying, All-devouring, all-destroying Never finding full repast, Till I eat the world at last.
Jonathan Swift
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Have you not observed that there is a lower kind of discretion and regularity, which seldom fails of raising men to the highest station in the court, the church, and the law?
Jonathan Swift -
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.
Jonathan Swift -
How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice when they will not so much as take warning.
Jonathan Swift -
Argument is the worst sort of conversation.
Jonathan Swift