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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
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Desires
Shoes
Cutting
Wealth
Stoical
Wants
Supplying
Feet
Scheme
Desire
Schemes
Money
Boots
More quotes by Jonathan Swift
Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe, how much it altered her person for the worse.
Jonathan Swift
When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.
Jonathan Swift
War: that mad game the world so loves to play.
Jonathan Swift
What vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me, although I am not so old in proportion to them as I formerly was: which I can prove by arithmetic, for then I was double their age, which now I am not. Letter to Alexander Pope. 7 Feb. 1736.
Jonathan Swift
The more careless, the more modish.
Jonathan Swift
All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor it is like spending this year part of the next year's revenue.
Jonathan Swift
Real vision is the ability to see the invisible.
Jonathan Swift
The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.
Jonathan Swift
Everyone desires long life, not one old age.
Jonathan Swift
There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
Jonathan Swift
By the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your country you are and ought to be as free a people as your brethren in England.
Jonathan Swift
Careful observers may foretell the hour (By sure prognostics) when to dread a show'r. While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more.
Jonathan Swift
Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.
Jonathan Swift
Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
Jonathan Swift
Perpetual aiming at wit is a very bad part of conversation. It is done to support a character: it generally fails it is a sort of insult on the company, and a restraint upon the speaker.
Jonathan Swift
Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.
Jonathan Swift
If a lump of soot falls into the soup and you cannot conveniently get it out, stir it well in and it will give the soup a French taste.
Jonathan Swift
Such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up.
Jonathan Swift
Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
Jonathan Swift
Though Diogenes lived in a tub, there might be, for aught I know, as much pride under his rags, as in the fine-spun garments of the divine Plato.
Jonathan Swift
