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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
Desire
Schemes
Money
Boots
Like
Desires
Shoes
Cutting
Wealth
Stoical
Wants
Supplying
Feet
Scheme
More quotes by 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
You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
Jonathan Swift
It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.
Jonathan Swift
Words are but wind and learning is nothing but words ergo, learning is nothing but wind.
Jonathan Swift
There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them.
Jonathan Swift
Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.
Jonathan Swift
By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty.
Jonathan Swift
Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone.
Jonathan Swift
And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
Jonathan Swift
He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
Jonathan Swift
That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.
Jonathan Swift
In all I wish, how happy should I be, Thou grand Deluder, were it not for thee? So weak thou art that fools thy power despise And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise.
Jonathan Swift
If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.
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
Vision is seeing the invisible.
Jonathan Swift
Polite Conversation Why, everyone one as they like as the good woman said when she kissed her cow.
Jonathan Swift
I can discover no political evil in suffering bullies, sharpers, and rakes, to rid the world of each other by a method of their own where the law hath not been able to find an expedient.
Jonathan Swift
Do you think I was born in a wood to be afraid of an owl?
Jonathan Swift
So, naturalists observe, a flea Hath smaller fleas that on him prey And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum.
Jonathan Swift
The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides, While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides.
Jonathan Swift
