Quote

I have known some men possessed of good qualities which were very serviceable to others, but useless to themselves like a sun-dial on the front of a house, to inform the neighbours and passengers, but not the owner within.

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
Others
Useless
Inform
Good
Fronts
Passengers
Men
Sun
Usefulness
Like
Front
Owner
Quality
Neighbour
Within
Possessed
Serviceable
Known
Owners
Dial
House
Qualities
Neighbours

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So geographers, in Africa maps, With savage pictures fill their gaps, And o'er uninhabitable downs Place elephants for want of towns
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God hath intended our passions to prevail over reason.
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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.
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My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
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Kitchen Physic is the best Physic.
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I'll give you leave to call me anything, if you don't call me spade.
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I've often wish'd that I had clear, For life, six hundred pounds a year A handsome house to lodge a friend A river at my garden's end A terrace walk, and half a rood Of land set out to plant a wood.
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Lord, Madame, I have fed like a farmer I shall grow as fat as a porpoise.
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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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What poet would not grieve to see His brother write as well as he? But rather than they should excel, He'd wish his rivals all in Hell.
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One principal object of good-breeding is to suit our behaviour to the three several degrees of men, our superiors, our equals, and those below us.
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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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Such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up.
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Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company.
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Careful observers may foretell the hour (By sure prognostics) when to dread a show'r. While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more.
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It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.
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She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork.
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The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little.
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Just get the right syllable in the proper place.
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