Quote

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

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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
Rather
Infinite
Honey
Culture
Labor
Corner
Nature
Difference
Poison
Furnishing
Two
Mankind
Fill
Ranging
Light
Instead
Corners
Hives
Every
Rest
Search
Noblest
Things
Differences
Chosen
Sweetness
Whatever
Thus
Dirt

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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I always love to begin a journey on Sundays, because I shall have the prayers of the church to preserve all that travel by land, or water.
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God hath intended our passions to prevail over reason.
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Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age.
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I won't quarrel with my bread and butter.
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Philosophy! the lumber of the schools.
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They say fish should swim thrice * * * first it should swim in the sea (do you mind me?) then it should swim in butter, and at last, sirrah, it should swim in good claret.
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A jargon form'd from the lost language, wit, Confounded in that Babel of the pit Form'd by diseased conceptions, weak and wild, Sick lust of souls, and an abortive child Born between whores and fops, by lewd compacts, Before the play, or else between the acts Nor wonder, if from such polluted minds Should spring such short and transitory kinds.
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If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.
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It is a maxim, that those, to whom everybody allows the second place, have an undoubted title to the first.
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Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.
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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.
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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.
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You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday
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Whence proceeds this weight we lay On what detracting people say? Their utmost malice cannot make Your head, or tooth, or finger ache Nor spoil your shapes, distort your face, Or put one feature out of place.
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I row after health like a waterman.
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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.
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Tis nothing when you are used to it.
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Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone.
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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.
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Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like a face on the wall or the wainscot can, by two or three touches with a lead pencil, make it look visible, and agreeing with what he fancied.
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