Quote

For poetry, he's past his prime, He takes an hour to find a rhyme His fire is out, his wit decayed, His fancy sunk, his muse a jade. I'd have him throw away his pen, But there's no talking to some men.

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
Takes
Rhyme
Fire
Pens
Hours
Wit
Talking
Prime
Away
Fancy
Decayed
Past
Throw
Jade
Find
Hour
Sunk
Men
Poetry
Muse

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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A ridiculous passion which hath no being but in play-books and romances.
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No preacher is listened to but time, which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have in vain tried to put into our heads before.
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Religion seems to have grown an infant with age, and requires miracles to nurse it, as it had in its infancy.
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Philosophy! the lumber of the schools.
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Sweeping from butcher's stalls, dung, guts, and blood, Drown'd puppies, stinking sprats, all drench'd in mud, Dead cats, and turnip-tops, come tumbling down the flood.
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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.
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It may pass for a maxim in State, that the administration cannot be placed in too few hands, nor the legislature in too many.
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Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired
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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.
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By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty.
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Few are qualified to shine in company, but it is in most men's power to be agreeable.
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A wise man will find us to be rogues by our faces.
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All panegyrics are mingled with an infusion of poppy.
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Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
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The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclined men in the course of virtue, but seldom or ever reclaims the vicious.
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For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
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I would rather be a freeman among slaves than a slave among freemen.
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My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
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Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.
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He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
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