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Small causes are sufficient to make a man uneasy, when great ones are not in the way: for want of a block he will stumble at a straw.
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
Way
Uneasy
Make
Trifles
Men
Sufficient
Block
Ones
Causes
Straw
Small
Stumble
Great
Straws
More quotes by Jonathan Swift
If the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my Travels.
Jonathan Swift
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.
Jonathan Swift
Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age.
Jonathan Swift
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
Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe, how much it altered her person for the worse.
Jonathan Swift
We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
Jonathan Swift
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.
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
There are but three ways for a man to revenge himself of the censure of the world,--to despise it, to return the like, or to endeavor to live so as to avoid it the first of these is usually pretended, the last is almost impossible, the universal practice is for the second.
Jonathan Swift
A ridiculous passion which hath no being but in play-books and romances.
Jonathan Swift
Liberty of conscience is nowadays only understood to be the liberty of believing what men please, but also of endeavoring to propagate that belief as much as they can.
Jonathan Swift
I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world.
Jonathan Swift
Arbitrary power is but the first natural step from anarchy, or the savage life.
Jonathan Swift
For, if we take an examination of what is generally understood by happiness, as it has respect either to the understanding or the senses, we shall find all its properties and adjuncts will herd under this short definition: that it is a perpetual possession of being well deceived.
Jonathan Swift
A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention, by false speaking, to deceive and injure your neighbour.
Jonathan Swift
Desponding Phyllis was endu'd With ev'ry Talent of a Prude, She trembled when a Man drew near Salute her, and she turn'd her Ear: If o'er against her you were plac'd She durst not look above your Waist
Jonathan Swift
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.
Jonathan Swift
All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor it is like spending this year part of the next year's revenue.
Jonathan Swift
It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.
Jonathan Swift
The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word.
Jonathan Swift
