Quote

Blot out, correct, insert, refine, enlarge, diminish, interline. Be mindful, when invention fails. To scratch your head and bite your nails.

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
Failing
Bite
Head
Diminish
Blot
Fails
Refine
Mindfulness
Enlarge
Nails
Insert
Bites
Mindful
Correct
Scratch
Invention
Scratches

More quotes by Jonathan Swift

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If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.
Jonathan Swift
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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
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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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We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
Jonathan Swift
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Love why do we one passion call, When 'tis a compound of them all? Where hot and cold, where sharp and sweet, In all their equipages meet Where pleasures mix'd with pains appear, Sorrow with joy, and hope with fear.
Jonathan Swift
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No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.
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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What religion is he of? Why, he is an Anythingarian.
Jonathan Swift
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In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man uncapable of holding any public station for, since kings avow themselves to be the deputies of Providence.
Jonathan Swift
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Polite Conversation Why, everyone one as they like as the good woman said when she kissed her cow.
Jonathan Swift
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The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
Jonathan Swift
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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.
Jonathan Swift
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Philosophy! the lumber of the schools.
Jonathan Swift
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A carpenter is known by his chips.
Jonathan Swift
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I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
Jonathan Swift
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A footman may swear but he cannot swear like a lord. He can swear as often: but can he swear with equal delicacy, propriety, and judgment?
Jonathan Swift
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There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.
Jonathan Swift
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The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little.
Jonathan Swift
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By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty.
Jonathan Swift
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The affectation of some late authors to introduce and multiply cant words is the most ruinous corruption in any language.
Jonathan Swift