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The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
Jonathan Swift
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Jonathan Swift
Age: 77 †
Born: 1667
Born: November 30
Died: 1745
Died: October 19
Essayist
Human Rights Activist
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Pamphleteer
Philosopher
Poet
Priest
Prosaist
Public Figure
Dublin city
Isaac Bickerstaff
M. B. Drapier
Lemuel Gulliver
Simon Wagstaff
Wants
Supplying
Feet
Scheme
Desire
Schemes
Money
Boots
Like
Desires
Shoes
Cutting
Wealth
Stoical
More quotes by Jonathan Swift
In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.
Jonathan Swift
The system of morality to be gathered from the ancient sages falls very short of that delivered in the gospel.
Jonathan Swift
It is not so much the being exempt from faults as the having overcome them that is an advantage to us it being with the follies of the mind as with weeds of a field, which if destroyed and consumed upon the place where they grow, enrich and improve it more than if none had ever sprung there.
Jonathan Swift
I'll give you leave to call me anything, if you don't call me spade.
Jonathan Swift
I have known some men possessed of good qualities which were very serviceable to others, but useless to themselves like a sun-dial on the front of a house, to inform the neighbours and passengers, but not the owner within.
Jonathan Swift
'T is an old maxim in the schools, That flattery 's the food of fools Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit.
Jonathan Swift
Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
Jonathan Swift
Few are qualified to shine in company, but it is in most men's power to be agreeable.
Jonathan Swift
Pedantry is properly the over-rating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to.
Jonathan Swift
Some dire misfortune to portend, no enemy can match a friend.
Jonathan Swift
Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company.
Jonathan Swift
We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
Jonathan Swift
For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labor, and search, and ranging through every corner of nature the difference is that instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
Jonathan Swift
Satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any.
Jonathan Swift
Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation td posterity? Let him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments.
Jonathan Swift
Ever eating, never cloying, All-devouring, all-destroying Never finding full repast, Till I eat the world at last.
Jonathan Swift
O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee, whose graceless children scorn to own thee! . Yet thou hast greater cause to be ashamed of them, than they of thee.
Jonathan Swift
For, if we take an examination of what is generally understood by happiness, as it has respect either to the understanding or the senses, we shall find all its properties and adjuncts will herd under this short definition: that it is a perpetual possession of being well deceived.
Jonathan Swift
Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
Jonathan Swift
Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.
Jonathan Swift
