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The tiny Lilliputians surmise that Gulliver's watch may be his god, because it is that which, he admits, he seldom does anything without consulting.

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
Anything
Gulliver
May
Consulting
Without
Admits
Seldom
Tiny
Watches
Watch
Doe
Surmise

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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Many a truth is told in jest.
Jonathan Swift
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No man of honor, as the word is usually understood, did ever pretend that his honor obliged him to be chaste or temperate, to pay his creditors, to be useful to his country, to do good to mankind, to endeavor to be wise or learned, to regard his word, his promise, or his oath.
Jonathan Swift
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He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
Jonathan Swift
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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
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When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
Jonathan Swift
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The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk.
Jonathan Swift
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It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
Jonathan Swift
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Whoe'er excels in what we prize, Appears a hero in our eyes Each girl, when pleased with what is taught, Will have the teacher in her thought. . . . . A blockhead with melodious voice, In boarding-schools may have his choice.
Jonathan Swift
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You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday
Jonathan Swift
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The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
Jonathan Swift
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Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.
Jonathan Swift
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In church your grandsire cut his throat to do the job too long he tarried: he should have had my hearty vote to cut his throat before he married.
Jonathan Swift
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Books, the children of the brain.
Jonathan Swift
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Just get the right syllable in the proper place.
Jonathan Swift
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But you think that it is time for me to have done with the world, and so I would if I could get into a better before I was called into the best, and not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.
Jonathan Swift
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A traveler's chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad-as well as good example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.
Jonathan Swift
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Bread is the staff of life.
Jonathan Swift
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What poet would not grieve to see His brother write as well as he? But rather than they should excel, He'd wish his rivals all in Hell.
Jonathan Swift
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Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
Jonathan Swift
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I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.
Jonathan Swift