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

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The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
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Lord, Madame, I have fed like a farmer I shall grow as fat as a porpoise.
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This wine should be eaten, it is too good to be drunk.
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Cruel people are ever cowards in emergency.
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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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Fond of those hives where folly reigns, And cards and scandal are the chains, Where the pert virgin slights a name, And scorns to redden into shame.
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Pray steal me not, I'm Mrs. Dingley's, Whose heart in this four-footed thing lies.
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May you live all the days of your life.
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The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk.
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Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers because, whoever shares his thoughts with the public will convince them as he himself appears convinced.
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For though, in nature, depth and height Are equally held infinite: In poetry, the height we know 'Tis only infinite below.
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Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
Jonathan Swift
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hoever wishes to win in this game must have patience and money, since the values are so little constant and the rumors so little founded on truth Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.
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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.
Jonathan Swift
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It is an uncontrolled truth, that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them.
Jonathan Swift
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As love without esteem is capricious and volatile esteem without love is languid and cold.
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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Do you think I was born in a wood to be afraid of an owl?
Jonathan Swift
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If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.
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'T is an old maxim in the schools, That flattery 's the food of fools Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit.
Jonathan Swift