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This made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavor to do himself honor among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him.
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
Vain
Degree
Degrees
Honor
Reflect
Among
Comparison
Made
Endeavor
Men
Attempt
Equality
More quotes by Jonathan Swift
Nor do they trust their tongue alone, but speak a language of their own can read a nod, a shrug, a look, far better than a printed book convey a libel in a frown, and wink a reputation down.
Jonathan Swift
Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.
Jonathan Swift
I row after health like a waterman.
Jonathan Swift
My horses understand me tolerably well I converse with them at least four hours every day. They are strangers to bridle or saddle they live in great amity with me, and friendship of each other.
Jonathan Swift
There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
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
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
It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.
Jonathan Swift
Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.
Jonathan Swift
I remember it was with extreme difficulty that I could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word opinion, or how a point could be disputable because reason taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain and beyond our knowledge we cannot do either.
Jonathan Swift
Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company.
Jonathan Swift
It is the first rule in oratory that a man must appear such as he would persuade others to be: and that can be accomplished only by the force of his life.
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
Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.
Jonathan Swift
Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.
Jonathan Swift
Books, the children of the brain.
Jonathan Swift
Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.
Jonathan Swift
I am convinced that if the virtuosi could once find out a world in the moon, with a passage to it, our women would wear nothing but what directly came from thence.
Jonathan Swift
Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
Jonathan Swift
Everyone desires long life, not one old age.
Jonathan Swift
