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

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Books, like men their authors, have no more than one wayofcoming intothe world, but there areten thousand to go out of it, and return no more.
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What we call the Irish Brogue is no sooner discovered, than it makes the deliverer, in the last degree, ridiculous and despised and, from such a mouth, an Englishman expects nothing but bulls, blunders, and follies.
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Bread is the staff of life.
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Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.
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A chuck under the chin is worth two kisses.
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There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
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Principally I hate and detest that animal called man although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.
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A Child will make two Dishes at an Entertainment for Friends and when the Family dines alone, the fore or hind Quarter will makea reasonable Dish and seasoned with a little Pepper or Salt, will be very good Boiled on the fourth Day, especially in Winter.
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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 never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
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As love without esteem is capricious and volatile esteem without love is languid and cold.
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Flattery is the worst and falsest way of showing our esteem.
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I'm up and down and round about, Yet all the world can't find me out Though hundreds have employed their leisure, They never yet could find my measure.
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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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Blot out, correct, insert, refine, enlarge, diminish, interline. Be mindful, when invention fails. To scratch your head and bite your nails.
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When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
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Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.
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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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By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty.
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Faith, that's as well said as if I had said it myself.
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