Jonathan Swift Quotes
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Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.
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Hail fellow, well met.
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Some men, under the notion of weeding out prejudice, eradicate virtue, honesty and religion.
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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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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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You cannot reason a person out of something they were not reasoned into.
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A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
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We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
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A lie is an excuse guarded.
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If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.
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Let a man be ne'er so wise, he may be caught with sober lies.
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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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Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.
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I've often wish'd that I had clear, For life, six hundred pounds a year; A handsome house to lodge a friend; A river at my garden's end; A terrace walk, and half a rood Of land set out to plant a wood.
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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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From not the gravest of Divines, Accept for once some serious Lines.
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By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty.
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Observation is an old man's memory.
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Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone.
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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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Exploding many things under the name of trifles is a very false proof either of wisdom or magnanimity, and a great check to virtuous actions with regard to fame.
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Books, the children of the brain.
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An atheist has got one point beyond the devil.
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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?